


At the End of it All

by ImpishFics



Category: Stray Kids (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Bad Parenting, Blow Jobs, End of the World, Fantasy elements, Final Days, Friends to Lovers, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, M/M, Mentioned Stray Kids Ensemble, Pining, Rimming, Smut, Swimming, don't let the mcd scare you
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-02
Updated: 2020-10-16
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:00:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 22,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26773315
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ImpishFics/pseuds/ImpishFics
Summary: Nothing in this life is ever certain, until one day, December fourth, 2022 when one thing is; the world wakes up, and in everyone’s mind, in every heart, one thing is certain: the world will end in five days, and there's not a thing anyone can do about it.There are five days left, and everyone Minho has ever known is already gone. Everyone who has loved him has quietly passed on to somewhere better. Everyone except for Chan.
Relationships: Bang Chan/Lee Minho | Lee Know
Comments: 15
Kudos: 63
Collections: SKZ Fuckfest





	1. Day 1 - Minho

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt 17: There are only five days left on earth and characters A and B are all that remains of their once vast friend group. Maybe their friends left to find sanctuary, but A and B stay behind and spend their last days together — maybe one finally confesses their feelings for the other before the world shuts down.
> 
> Thank you to the Fuckfest mod for being so accommodating and letting me upload this more at my own pace! The first Chapter is here now, the second chapter will be in the next coming week or so and I'll continue it on my own after that! 
> 
> This fic is possible thanks to my amazing friend Eli who always goes above and beyond, as well as two incredible beta's that I can finally tell you about now that I've been revealed! Nova and Kirby have been a great source of strength while writing and helped add a lot of clarity, I can't thank them enough. Our links are at the bottom!  
> This fic deals with death, but not violence, and ideas about the afterlife but not religion. Tags will be updated as new chapters are posted and new tags become relevant. 
> 
> Thank you to the prompter for such an incredible prompt I hope this doesn't let you down

Nothing in this life is ever certain, until one day, December fourth, 2022 when one thing is; the world wakes up, and in everyone’s mind, in every heart, one thing is certain: the world will end in five days, and there's not a thing anyone can do about it. 

**Day - 1**

Minho opens his eyes, and he knows. He wipes the sleep from his eyes and he knows. His clock blinks 6:12 in the morning and he knows. The world is ending in five days. And he’s still here.

The floor is still cold when his bare feet touch down, his back is still sore from his lumpy springy mattress, his hair is slightly too long and getting in his eyes. He feels remarkably unchanged. He stretches his sore legs, still tender from running yesterday; he was prepping for his first ever marathon, January thirteenth. He now knows he won’t ever get that far, but it doesn’t stop his joints aching. 

The apartment is more silent than he can ever remember it being, but he also doesn’t know if he’s ever been awake this early in the time he’s lived here with his friends. His friends. He pulls open his door and races out into the living room - empty - he knocks on Felix’s room first but there is no response. Again, he knocks, but there's already something sinking in his chest. He pushes the door open and for a second he’s blinded by light. 

Felix’s windows are open, sunlight already crashing through the swaying gauzy white curtains that fill the space. Felix isn’t there. Instead, on his bed, his mattress on the floor, there’s a large clear balloon floating two feet above his head, swaying and bobbing in the wind. The light pouring through it tints the scraped wooden floor a prism of colors.

Minho comes closer. The balloon isn’t floating like he thought; it's attached with clear string - fishing wire maybe - to a perfectly formed rock on the mattress. Perfectly formed not because it’s a smooth perfectly round grey stone but perfectly formed in that it looks like any rock Minho has seen, it looks like every rock that Minho has seen. When he squints it looks like multiple rocks, more grey, more white, pinker and browner, when he squints it takes different shapes, more oblong, taller, wider, more prominent divets and bumps. He stops squinting. The rock is perfectly formed. It’s sun warmed to the touch and heavy in his hands, five pounds? Eight? Ten? It feels good in his palms: rough and heavy, substantial. And there, on the smoother bottom of the stone, engraved clearly in a font Minho can’t place but can read easily, it reads, _“Felix Lee - Happy Ending.”_

Hyunjin finds Minho like that, sitting on the mattress sunlight streaming in, clutching what's left of their dear friend to his chest and letting it warm him. 

Hyunjin joins him on the mattress. It’s an oddly familiar image, Hyunjin, Minho, and Felix on Felix’s bed. Hyunjin and Felix are clingy and Minho is sleepy. They could cling to each other and Minho could rest and they would lie like that and listen to podcasts or the radio, never tv, that way Minho could close his eyes. Sundays when no one was working, they might waste hours like this, in the sun from Felix’s windows (he always had the best light in his room) just resting together, not talking much besides giggling or commenting on what they heard, just recuperating together. 

Minho doesn’t cry. Hyunjin doesn’t either. They hold their friend close until, instead of the rock warming them, it’s them siphoning their body heat to the rock. They let it take, they let Felix take their heat, their warmth, their life, one last time. 

Minho sets the rock back down on the mattress. The balloon bobs happily with the height change. He looks up at Hyunjin. 

“You’re still here.” It's not a question but it's doubting, disbelieving, it’s uncertain. 

“I’m still here. For now.” He holds something out. It looks like a silk bookmark, one that would be placed in showy volumes at bookstores on display. “I woke up with this under my tongue.” Minho scrunches his face distastefully but still reaches for it, the universe is a funny thing. 

He instantly recognizes the font as the same one from Felix’s stone, that same font that's clear but unplaceable except for here. Fate’s handwriting. 

_Hwang Hyunjin, an ending uncertain. The world will end in five days, but the second you burn this slip, so will you. For each moment you wait your odds shift farther from favor. You now have a greater chance at a happy ending than you will in a day, in an hour, in a minute. In the end, your end is in your hands._

Minho reads it again and again. _Farther from favor_. He looks up at Hyunjin, the silk still in his hands, and asks: “What are you still doing here?”

Hyunjin looks at him. “Where’s yours?” Minho places the slip back into Hyunjin’s hand. 

“I don’t have one.” Minho is still here, no happy ending, Minho has no slip, no way to make his own ending. What Minho does have is this: “I have five days.” Hyunjin’s face speaks of remorse, but not of surprise, and his long arms wrap Minho in a tight hug. It’s condolences and a goodbye. 

“I texted everyone,” Minho inhales sharply, he had completely forgotten about the rest of their friends, “Seungmin’s like me, and he found Changbin and Jeongin’s stones. Seungmin’s already gone, but he wants us to know he loves us.” Good, it’s good that he’s already gone. Hyunjin should be gone too but Minho squeezes him for a moment longer before separating. 

“That’s good. What about Jisung and Chan? Any news?” Hyunjin shakes his head. 

“Still waiting to hear from them. They might have gone in the night, you know.” Minho nods. He wonders if their stones look like Felix’s, if their balloons also glitter in the light. He pulls out his phone, and opens their chat. Jisung and Chan are typing. Minho eyes widen, he realizes they don’t know. Jisung’s comes in first. 

_I got a slip, I’ll leave in the next hour I love you guys_

Minho sighs, relieved and types his own message, beating Chan. 

_I got a bad ending._

Chan’s bubble disappears and reappears, his message comes in next. 

_Same here._ Minho stares at his phone and digests that. Hyunjin makes a small noise in the back of his throat. Minho closes his eyes and thinks about Hyunjin’s last moments on earth, thinks of the next five days. 

_What’s ur schedule look like for the next five days?_ Hyunjin laughs, which makes it worth it, Chan plays along. 

_Suddenly it’s very free, hbu?_

_Strangely enough its the same for me, perhaps a vacation?_

Hyunjin decides he’ll leave at nine. It leaves them with an hour and thirteen minutes after their time spent with Felix’s stone. It’s like it’s Hyunjin’s birthday all over again. Minho makes them mimosas just the way Hyunjin likes: light on the champagne, heavy on the orange juice. They sit on Felix’s bed in the sun and Minho indulges Hyunjin by combing through his long hair with his fingers and scratching at his scalp. Hyunjin cries, just a little, when he talks about what he hopes it will be like, what a happy ending would mean to him. It sounds a little like college, funnily enough, even if Hyunjin only went for three semesters. When the time comes, Hyunjin hugs him again. Minho hugs him back. 

“You’ll be okay.” Minho whispers into Hyunjin’s shoulder. Hyunjin pulls back and looks at Minho. 

“You too. You’ll be okay too.” And then he smiles and Minho smiles back, and pretends to flip hair over his shoulder. 

“I know.” They both know that they can’t know that but it’s reassuring anyway. They hug one last time before Hyunjin, the stoner that he is, pulls the snoopy lighter from his pocket. Minho takes a step back. Hyunjin lights the slip. It takes the fire fast, faster than any normal fabric would, and the fire grows in Hyunjin’s hand until it’s a blinding white light, filling Minho’s vision and blinking out. 

Minho blinks, repeatedly, the light fades, his vision comes back hazy. Felix’s room, the floor dances in a prism of color, except for where there's a more solid shadow. Hyunjin’s balloon bobs next to Felix’s but where Felix’s is clear, a prism for light to pass through, Hyunjin’s is filled with swirling white smoke, a vortex that's unaffected when Minho bumps the balloon. Hyunjin’s rock clearly reads, “ _Hwang Hyunjin - An End Uncertain._ ”

Minho’s friends are gone. His stomach rumbles. He feels like crying but he laughs instead and makes himself an omelette. He watches the eggs, waits to flip it, and he thinks about what to pack on his vacation. 

Minho waits for Chan on his stoop. The world is quiet. He doesn’t see any people: no joggers, no commuters, no moms pushing prams. Chan’s car rumbles up. Minho has always liked that Chan’s car is loud. It’s not loud in the macho way, it’s not a flashy old Camaro or some other nice vintage car Minho doesn’t know, it's just regular old. A 2004 Toyota Camry, with worn red paint and a sound that probably means engine damage and something no good. The world's ending in five days, so who has time to fix a car? 

Chan greets Minho with a wave from inside the car, and pops the trunk, Minho drops his weekend bag and closes the trunk before bounding to the passenger door. 

“Hey!” Minho smiles. He can’t help it, like when he laughed while making his eggs; he can’t stop himself. Chan can’t stop himself either, he smiles back. 

‘Hiya!” Chan has a goofy grin, one that makes people working in customer service swoon, it’s never had the same effect on Minho, it only makes him laugh. 

“Jisung gone?” Chan nods. 

“Hyunjin?”

“We had mimosas before.” Chan laughs.

“Jisung took a couple bong rips from Changbin’s bong.” Minho laughs. 

“Of course he did.” 

“He got all sentimental about it too.” Minho laughs more, and does a poor impression of Jisung’s voice. 

“I remember,” Minho pretends to sniff like he’s teary eyed, “when Changbin bought this bong,” another fake sniff that makes Chan laugh, “it was a total rip-off.” Chan laughs but that devolves, like a lot of Chan’s laughs, into a story. 

“It really was a rip-off! No, I swear we were…” Minho doesn’t mind, Chan has a lot to say, especially about memories. Minho buckles his seatbelt as Chan pulls away from the curb, still describing the scene. Now is a good time for memories, a good time to share them. 

“Where are we going?” Minho asks after Chan finishes, as he’s pulling onto the highway. Minho doesn’t really have opinions, per se, he’s just curious. The goofy grin is back, but when does it really ever leave?

“North?” Minho grins back. 

“Sounds like a plan.” Chan smiles, but his expression turns thoughtful. He doesn’t quite _stop_ smiling though. 

“Felix got a happy ending right?” Minho nods, “what do you think that’s like? For him?” Minho considers this. He looks out the window, there are barely any cars on the road. One passes every five minutes or so going the other direction. It’s like driving around on Christmas morning.

“Somewhere with lots of dogs.” 

Chan laughs but adds, “Cats too!” 

“Yeah cats too, for when he really wants to cuddle. I think his happy place would have grass he wasn’t allergic to.” 

“Felix was allergic to grass?” Minho nods, smiling at the memory of Felix all whiny as he spread cortisone over his legs in the summer. 

“Not majorly so or anything. But enough to make it annoying. I think his happy place would let him enjoy grass again.” 

“Do you think Jeongin’s has babies?” That makes Minho snort. The image of Jeongin just with a conveyor belt of different babies. 

“Or maybe old ladies to coo at him and for him to gossip with.” 

“You’re right I don’t think babies would be very good for him to gossip with.” That makes Minho think. 

“Do you think he’s alone? Like is everyone with a happy ending together or are they in their own separate happy ending?” Chan's hands tighten on the wheel. He has such prominent veins, it’s a wonder he’s made it to the end of the world and didn’t fall earlier to a paper cut. 

“I don’t know. I guess we can’t know until we know. If we get to find out.”

It kills the mood a bit, but not really in a bad way. It feels normal to feel things in tandem, love, gratitude, hopelessness, resignation, acceptance, joy. It takes time for things to sink; a rock in the ocean will still take a second or two to fall. There is no time left for emotions to sink, to wade into the depths of Minho's subconscious and be ignored. Everything is floating on the surface of his awareness. He feels everything in this moment at once.

And he also feels tired.

Normally on a car trip, Minho would curl up against the window and let his eyes drift close to the blur of scenery out his window, but for some reason he doesn't find himself looking out the window. Instead Minho curls to his other side, pillows his head in his hands and watches Chan watch the road. Sometimes, in Minho's own head, he thinks of Chan as Chris, as the boy he had introduced himself as. The boy in the cafe, with the rough warm hands and unruly hair, before Changbin had slung an arm over his shoulder and called him Chan and a million other names.

Minho sometimes feels like there's a difference between Chan and Chris. Chan is Minho's friend, the one who schedules the hangouts that actually keep their little group of friends together, the one who doesn't mind being the butt of the jokes and the one who works too hard. Chris is... something else.

Chris sometimes calls Minho early in the morning when Minho wakes up to stretch and go running and before Chan goes to bed. He speaks in a warm husky voice and makes half-delirious nonsensical jokes and he plays Minho the songs he writes after his shift at the bar.

Chris draws on his skin with a ballpoint pen when he's brainstorming, hastily scrawled lines that are always three strokes away from forming something truly artistic but beautiful nonetheless.

Chris leaves reviews on Good Reads of every book he reads in a year.

Chan isn't smiling but his face is open and relaxed in a way that feels kind as he stares at the curving road in front of them. It's a beautiful day, a beautiful view, suburban highway giving way to rural two lane interstates winding through thickets of trees and sprawling farmland. Minho doesn't look at it. He looks at Chan, fluffy hair and dark brows and a thick neck hidden behind the sloping hood of his favorite sweatshirt. Minho looks at Chan until he can't keep his eyes open, his early morning catching up to him as he's lulled to sleep by the movement of the car and Chan's voice humming along to the music.

Minho wakes to the car stopped and a hand gently shaking his shoulder. Minho cracks an eye open to give Chan the stink eye and roll over in his seat away from him.

"Oh no you don't," Chan says full of mirth as he shakes Minho's shoulder more substantially until he physically can't shake it off or ignore it.

"Wha-at," Minho grumbles, rubbing at his eyes. He opens them again and gasps before Chan can even say anything. Outside the sun is setting over the hills. Minho has no idea where they are but he might be in love, at least with this view. The sun, a fiery ball on the horizon, is casting the wheat and grain and tall grass in blades of orange and washing the world in warm soft tones. Chan isn't spared; he's bathed in a golden orange glow, otherworldly.

"Woah. Thanks for waking me," Minho says, already unbuckling his seatbelt. Chan is a step behind him, hurrying to extract himself while Minho has already stepped out into the light. The air is still a little chilly but warmer than at home and slightly humid.

“Is there any point in taking a photo?” Chan asks from somewhere behind Minho.

“No,” Minho closes his eyes and spreads his arms wide until he can feel the sun painting light behind his eyelids and it’s fleeting warmth on his skin, “from this point on no more planning ahead to look back. Just feel this.”

Minho hears Chan crunching around in his big boots on the road and he turns opening his eye to him. Chan is turning in slow circles surveying their surroundings and it strikes Minho that he didn't even think to turn his back to the sun. He copies Chan, walks a slow spin to look around at the beauty and emptiness that stretches around them. Behind them, at the top of a hill is a big house - not a mansion, but the kind that can really only logically exist with this much sprawling land in every direction. It's sloping and flat, one and a half levels at most with big windows for looking at the view. And at the top of the hill with the house two things catch Minho's attention.

There's a cheesy sign, like the kind he would find in a pier one imports or a gift shop in a coastal town, a faux street sign with arrows pointing to different places. City that way, beach that way, prairie that way ect. except for the one pointing directly at the house, "Vacation Home Here." The second thing that catches Minho's attention is the cat sitting on top of the sign staked in the ground and the golden retriever sitting patiently in front of the door.

Minho is racing up the hill before he even realizes and Chan yells at him to wait up. Minho thinks he could get ticks from all this tall grass, but could they really do anything in just five days? Lymes disease takes more than that to manifest symptoms usually. He pants at the top of the hill. The incline makes his calves ache but he's not as bad as Chan who is doubly out of breath by the time he reaches the top, mostly from yelling at Minho while he ran.

Minho ignores Chan to walk towards the dog with his fist outstretched for it to smell. The dog doesn't seem scared, it trots over with is tongue out and happily recieves Minho's pets. Minho doesn't bother the cat where it watches him and chan with great suspicion from its perch. Even though he really wants to. He distracts himself by giving the dog, whose name tag reads Maple, lots of pets.

"She might be dehydrated," Chan says. It's the only thing Chan has said in the last minute that he listens to.

"She probably is, I bet that's why she wanted to get inside."

"Should we," Chan gestures to the door, "I mean I normally wouldn't but what if..." He trails off.

_What if the people supposed to let her in are already gone?_

"I mean, we can try. We- I don't think anyone would mind right now." Chan nods but it's Minho who is the one to stand and get closer to the door. It's a deep oak with a metal knocker and handle and he hesitates a moment before reaching forward to turn it. It's a heavy door, but it swings open with the wind.

Maple pushes the door the final bit open with her nose before happily trotting inside, trekking dirt onto warm, well-worn wooden floors. Minho takes a step forward to follow her and hesitates. There's a shoe rack with two pairs of shoes on it. Tall green rain boots and smaller, child size rain boots orange with black tiger stripes. Something about that feels...sad? to Minho? It's confusing. It's like all his emotions are at the bottom of muddy water and he can't quite make out their shape.

Chan must sense his hesitations because he slides his hand into Minho's to give it a squeeze before he leans farther into the house.

"Hello? Anyone home?" There's no response but Minho wasn't expecting one. He looks at the rough wood but he still can't bring himself to step on it with his shoes. Minho lets go of Chan's hand to slip off his shoes and to let Chan begin to unlace his confusing boots. Minho steps forward in the house without him.

The hallway opens up to an open space: couches and coffee tables and floor cushions for gathering, a table for eating meals and the beginning of a view. The back wall isn't a wall really but a half wall that, upon further inspection, is a balcony with spiraling stairs down another half level or so. The house isn't just on top of a hill, but built into the back of one.

Minho takes the steps slowly, careful not to slip in his socks, but also to keep his eyes on the view. The back of the house is almost entirely covered in windows, with sliding doors at the bottom and a few sturdy sections of wall and then it’s large panels of glass all the way up to the impossibly high barn beam ceilings. And the view is another thing entirely.

The sunset was incredible from the car but here, without the sun itself as spectacle, the hill behind the house is cast in warm tones from the receding day and the purple-blues of the onset of dusk. The hill is tall grass and wildflowers with a path that is more a loosely mowed line than a gravel and well-worn path down. And there, at the bottom, is a river.

If Minho hadn't been sleeping in the car he probably would have seen it winding earlier; maybe this river and others like it are the reason the roads out here can't seem to stick to a straight line. Still, Minho hadn't and now he feels mesmerized. It's wide: 120 metres, maybe 150 metres but Minho wouldn't know, he's never been very good at guessing how big anything is. He just knows it's big enough that he wouldn't be able to swim across it. Maybe Chan could, what with his lifeguarding and all. But still, it's big and beautiful and glittering in the light.

Chan finally makes it to the top of the stairs when Minho is already at the bottom, near the sliding doors staring out the glass as the wonder below.

It's Chan who finds Maple, slurping away at a bowl of water in the kitchen tucked into one side of what Minho would call the sunroom. It's Chan who finds the dog, but it's Minho who finds the note, taped to the surface of the island countertop in purposefully neat scrawl.

_Zeyu-_

_Thank you for helping out with Maple, we really appreciate it! We will be back in three weeks so you might have to buy her new food in that time but they have it at the general store no-problem and we'll reimburse you for the cost. Her bowl and food are kept in the same place as last time, and her leash is in the closet by the door but if you just want to let her roam in the back she knows to come back and stick close. The cats get food around seven at night every day and usually come to the dinner bell or the sound of the opening of the cans. Help yourself to anything in the pantry._

_thanks,_

_-Soojin_

_Cell: XXXXXXXXX_

Minho reads it aloud and then again for himself because sometimes he doesn't fully digest things if he's reading them aloud.

It's Chan who speaks first: "So I guess they won't be coming back."

"How do you know?"

"Look," Chan points to a date at the top of the page Minho hadn't noticed, "one week ago. If they aren't gone yet, wherever they are now they’re probably staying there."

"Oh," Minho guesses that makes sense but, "wait where's Zeyu then?"

Chan bites his lip, thinking, and it's a shame because Chan would have _such_ nice lips if he used lip balm or just stopped terrorizing them so much with his teeth.

"Do you think he's a kid?"

"I mean, probably right?" Minho responds back, unsure.

"I think anyone under eighteen went immediately. Like an automatic happy ending."

"Oh."

"Yeah when I called my mum this morning she let me know, she woke up and was the only one left, my dad and little siblings already left and my neighbor said their kids too."

"That makes sense," Minho says but instead he's trapped in that phrase. When Chan called his parents. Minho knows Hyunjin texted his own and that Seungmin probably walked down the block to where his parents live to say goodbye in person or something. Minho didn't even think of trying to contact his parents, and even now he doesn't want to. The number's probably different. Maybe they went immediately. Maybe his parents are already gone.

Minho crouches down suddenly like he can dodge his feelings, guilt and regret and sacred anger, and Maple noses her way between his legs for scratches that Minho is happy to give.

"Maple is most likely alone."

Minho tsks and speaks in a voice that's half-way to baby talk, "well now we can't have that." Minho never got very good at dogs, he's a cat person, but Maple is an angel and it's the end of the world. "What do you say we stop here for the night?" Minho asks, looking up at Chan.

Chan's eyes have gone soft at the sight. Maple is a very cute old lady, so Minho doesn't blame him. "Why not?" Chan relents to the spontaneity. Minho grins back and laughs when Maple bumps his other hand with her snout. Chan joins him in both laughing and giving Maple some loving.

Eventually, they explore the rest of the house. It's huge. The sunroom with the kitchen and loveseats might actually be the smallest space in the house. There's the main floor with a TV Minho hadn't noticed before and some really soft looking blankets. Back towards the front of the house, down a side corridor, there are two smaller rooms with double sized beds in each and a bathroom. They find the master bedroom hidden away, down in the sun room behind an unassuming door that practically blends into the wall but that slides open to reveal a king-sized bed made of a lacquered wood with little carvings. The house is _full_ of wood; Minho thinks that if someone looks at it wrong it might burn down, all wood and glass and the master is no exception.

Not only is the bed the pinnacle of woodworking but there's a matching carved chest at the base of it, and the walls have an elaborate wooden trim that contrasts the wood on the bed but somehow ties into the wooden floor. The side tables, the dressers, the frame on the big mirror on the back of the ensuite door, it's all wood. The tree carcasses are interrupted only by the soft cream carpet on the floor under the bed and the all glass wall facing the river.

Chan whistles. "No curtains, ey?"

Minho laughs at him, "I guess not much need for modesty when you're the only one for miles."

Minho leaves Chan to inspect the ensuite and scavenges around the kitchen for the cat food. He finds it eventually in the cabinet above the fridge (people use the cabinet above the fridge for something other than liquor??) and puts it into two bowls before climbing up the stairs back to the front of the house.

He opens the door and laughs as he is greeted with four very expectant and furry faces. He squats down and puts down the bowls with space between them. He dings the slightly rusty bell once and another cat scampers over, a straggler. Minho doesn't get up, instead staying squatting and watching them eat.

He wonders if the animals know.

They eat the same as they always do, the same wild hungry way barn cats eat, barely swallowing each bite before choking down more, bits of wet mush coating their lips. Leaves and burrs and small coniferous needles are caught in the fur of the longer-haired dinner guests, accessories or maybe souvenirs of their day. One cat, a darker brown with orange splotches, is missing an ear, but he eats just as aggressively as the rest.

The bowls are licked clean and Minho watches the cats scatter down the hills in every direction - up a tree in one case - but one stays, the cat missing an ear. Minho sticks out his fist and the cat ignores it, walking past it to flop down next to Minho for pets. Minho is happy to oblige.

The sun is gone but it's not quite dark out. For one, there's a light on the porch that casts a warm yellow glow interrupted only by the silken shadows of moth's wings as they buzz around it. Secondly, the first of the stars are peeking out with such clarity it's almost offensive. There aren't stars in the city with all the light pollution, but here they are, the same as ever. They’re the same stars from when Minho was little and sitting on his slanted roof.

Somewhere out there, the stars could look different, could already be dead or have gone supernova or could just be the faint glow of white dwarfs but that image hasn't gotten to earth yet. Minho is seeing what they looked like a long long time ago, and so they look the same. And they look beautiful.

There's a rustle in the grass in front of the house and the cat jumps up to dart after it. Minho wipes off his hands and heads inside.

Chan is standing in front of the stove in the kitchen, cautiously stirring something in a pot. Minho watches him from the balcony and calls down to him.

"Whatchya cookin good-lookin?" Chan barks out a laugh and cranes his neck to look eyes with Minho.

"I found frozen chili in the freezer, are you ready to find out how good a cook "Soojin" is?" Minho can't help but laugh.

"Boy am I ever!" He fills the words with sarcasm, but the way he rolls his eyes is distinctly fond.

Soojin turns out to be a pretty solid cook. The chili could be spicier for Chan's taste but it's good as far as Minho is concerned, it’s hearty and filling and pretty well balanced.

After dinner Minho digs two towels out of a linen closet near the guest rooms and Chan grabs two beers from the fridge before they walk down the sloping hill on the almost-path to the river. 

Immediately Chan strips off his shirt and pants and runs into the water until it’s deep enough for him to jump in in just his boxers.

Chan bobs out of the whater shrieking at the temperature, "OH MY GOD IT’S SO COLD!" before he's dunking under again. Chan, it seems, is determined to get used to the temperature of the water. Minho laughs at him and instead rolls up his pants and cautiously walks in up to his shins.

It's cold, but not _that_ cold, Chan is just being a big baby, Minho is sure to tell him as much.

Chan scoffs, rubbing warmth into his arms, "Oh sure if it's so warm what are you doing on the shore!"

"Taking my sweet time!" Minho calls back, sticking out his tongue. Really he's not sure he's up for swimming, at least not when it's so dark. Chan walks towards Minho and hey, it's not so deep where he gets closer. Maybe Minho could go wading the way his grandmother used to. Just walk in the water and feel it pull at his legs.

Minho scoots back and pulls off his pants but leaves his shirt and walks back forward into the shallow half-foot-deep water. He goes a little farther until the water kisses the base of his knees as it laps at the shore. Chan gets closer and from this distance, Minho can see the way his hair hangs in wet dripping ringlets and the mischievous glint in his eyes. Minho has enough time, he could run back to shore and up the hill but he feels like a little kid again. He kind of wants to be caught.

He takes a few giggling steps back, but he never makes it quite out of the water.

Chan's eyes darken. "Oh no you don't" and he's running at Minho and capturing him up in his arms, swinging him around and marching into the water.

If the others were here Minho would put up more of a fight, kick. If the others were here this wouldn't happen, Chan would be swooping up a giggling Felix instead or they would all be collaborating to drag an unwilling Changbin into the water. Hyunjin would be doing handstands in the shallows and Jisung would be acting skittish and building a sandcastle with Jeongin. Jisung would probably only get in if everyone was skinny dipping, and everyone would tease him for it. But they aren't here, so Minho squirms and laughs and lets himself be caught and carried into the water.

It's scary, in the way dark water sort of always is, but it's not quite black outside. The stars give enough light for Minho to differentiate water and night, shades of dark, and to see Chan's pale back from where he's thrown over a shoulder. Chan tosses him into the water with a lot of noise and a surprising lack of force. It's deep enough for Minho to avoid hitting his head or anything but he can still stand with his neck and the tops of his shoulders breaching the surface when he comes up spluttering.

Minho isn't a great swimmer. He can sort of swim but he can't float or tread water, and Chan seems to remember that from their last beach day - or maybe he's just feeling lazy or scared too, because he doesn't go much deeper in the water.

The river bottom is soft: part sand, part clay in a way that makes his feet glide and little trenches form when he pushes off to chase Chan around. He gets a lot of joy from pushing Chan's legs over each time he tries to do a handstand and trying to swim away before Chan catches him and retaliates. Chan always catches him.

Years of competitive swimming and likely the ability to be buoyant (Minho figures it can't hurt) means Chan catches him easily each time and tackles him into the water. Chan's tackles aren't like real tackles; it's Chan's arms around his middle dragging him down, but also it's Chan's legs bounding them up and back to the surface before Minho can so much as kick his little legs. They hit the surface together laughing and gasping in air. The air is a little warmer than the water but Chan is loads warmer than both, a furnace of human body heat.

Minho gets tired first; despite taking a nap and having good endurance from running he just doesn't love water the same way Chan does, so he finds himself sitting in the shallower water and just watching Chan.

When he sits in the shallows, just deep enough for the edge of his drenched shirt to hover in the water, he can't see Chan as clearly. He becomes slivers of pale skin in the moonlight that emerge every so often and bleached hair glinting under the stars. Chan comes closer, still deeper in the water, crawling forward on his hands when the water is shallow enough and letting his feet float out behind him. Minho would never be able to do it, but Chan does it easily, looking both childish and a little bit like a beautiful predator.

"Having fun?" Minho asks him and Chan responds with a smile that shows off all his teeth. He really does look like a carnivore but an alluring one. It makes him think of Seungmin, talking with him on long car trips (the only time they really _talked_ ) about the romantics and the beauty and terror of nature hand in hand.

Minho scoots a bit closer to Chan without realizing. The sand turns to pebbles, to rocks, and to sand again as they get deeper. Minho rests on the pebbles and Chan has two hands supported by the larger rocks.

Chan walks his hands forward another step; he's maybe a foot away.

"Are you going to drag me in again?"

Chan pauses. Bites his lips. The water here isn't like the ocean but it's saltier than a lake, Minho lips his lips without thinking about it.

"Do I have to?" Chan asks instead. Suddenly, everything feels a little less like a joke.

"That depends."

"On?"

Minho takes a breath and he wonders about the difference between blunt and brave, but they - the whole world - are running out of time. "On whether you want me to splash around with you some more, or whether you just want to be close to me a little bit more."

Chan comes closer and his eyes are so wide and so dark it would be funny if Minho had the air to breathe.

"You caught me," Chan says in a breathless replication of their earlier games. "I… well- I…" He's sitting up, shuffling his legs underneath him to kneel uncomfortably on the rocks and it brings his chest and stomach out of the water. Minho reaches a hand out cautiously, curling his hand hesitantly over Chan's bicep.

Minho can't tell if Chan's goosebumps are from the air on his skin or Minho's touch.

"I want to hold you, I -"

"I get it. The world's ending, I get it. I want to be closer to you too." Minho can hear the way Chan's breath catches in his throat.

"Just so I'm being completely clear you mean not as friends ri-" Minho cuts off Chan's stupid question by leaning forward and kissing him. By pressing his mouth, warm and salty against Chan's own and sucking gently on his poor abused lower lip, on the chapped peeling skin, licking off the salt and brine and just _kissing_ him. Chan makes a sound but kisses back quickly. His hands find Minho's waist and he leans forward, sliding between Minho's legs to kiss him deeper. More tongue, more teeth, more touches that make him shiver.

Like in the water, Chan is so warm and his touch curls into Minho and stokes a fire in his stomach. His heart beats faster and his pulse raises and every point of contact between them becomes an outlet of heat surging through Minho.

When they break to gasp for air Minho says, "Do you get what I mean now?" Instead of laughing as Minho expected him to, Chan just hums.

"I think I do," he says, leaning back in. Despite all the warmth from Chan and the heat shared between them, Minho still ends up shivering after some time staying relatively still in the chilly air and water with the pebbles digging into his ass. The next time they break Chan pulls him to his feet.

Chan leads him through the pebbles and sand to the shore and steals a kiss before throwing a towel over his head to "help him dry his hair." Minho gets him back by kicking sand over his towel. Chan squawks and Minho giggles at the sound, unrepentant.

When they grab their clothes and Minho sees the beers sitting in the sand where they left them, un-opened and wet with condensation he laughs.

"What's so funny?" Chan asks coming behind Minho to look at what he's laughing at, Minho lets Chan hug him and just points. Chan laughs too.

"You don't need drugs to have fun kids," he snickers and Minho laughs at him too for such a horrible impersonation.

"Yeah Christopher? How do you intend on having fun tonight?" It's meant to be light, in the same way Minho always teases Chan and Changbin and Seungmin and the rest. With lewd remarks and innuendo because he loves making people blush, and Chan does blush but he also leans forward to kiss Minho again. Just when Minho starts to reciprocate in earnest Chan moves his attention to Minho's neck, humming a warning into the skin before sucking a hickey there.

"I don't know? You, me, king-sized bed?" Minho laughs at him, at all his smoothness gone to waste on such a horrible line. Still, he can't help but lean in and kiss Chan again and let him drag him giggling, laughing, tripping over sandy feet, up the hill back to the house.

You-me-king-sized-bed turns out to be a pretty good plan after they hose off sandy feet and Minho pushes Chan back onto the mattress with a playful shove. Minho swallows his nerves with the salty water and crawls forward to straddle Chan. Minho isn't the king of Grindr he once was or in the same rhythm of sensuality he had in his last long-term relationship a few years back, but he knows what to do, and he wants this. It almost surprises Minho just how much he wants this: wants Chan to kiss him, to hold him, to fuck into him and fill him up.

Minho crawls to Chan so he can straddle Chan’s hips and peel his own wet shirt off. Immediately Chan's hands are on his skin, so fast Minho laughs a little and even Chan grins a goofy little grin at himself but doesn't take his hands off. Chan's grin wanes and his eyes shine with something Minho can almost read but can't quite get. Minho hums a happy little hum when Chan's hands grope his pecs and thumb over his nipple.

Minho pushes a wet curl off Chan's forehead, "what are you thinking right now?"

"That you look incredible, like something straight out of one of my wet dreams." Minho huffs a little laugh at that and flicks one of Chan's solid sculpted shoulders.

"That pun better not have been intended," Minho says already leaning down.

"I'll never tell," Chan gets out before smiling into their kiss. This kiss is different from the ones on the beach. For one, they aren't in chilly water or the brisk air: they’re in the warmth of the house and the warmth of the sheets and the warmth of each other and that means Minho can _feel_ how he is affecting Chan. Minho can feel the growing hardness in Chan's pants when he wiggles closer and kisses down his sensitive neck to lick a stripe across his collar bones.

That’s another difference: there's an urgency now, a new clock ticking under his skin next to the one that seems to sit at the nape of his neck. That clock whispers across him and draws his skin tight. _Five days._ No, this clock is different. It rests in his gut and it doesn't whisper, it demands to be known in each second. This clock wants Chan, wants everything Chan can give him and not a milligram less. This clock wants every centimeter of Chan _now_ and Minho is out of excuses not to indulge himself.

The world is ending, who cares if Minho looks stupid as he sucks on and bites Chan's nipples when they both clearly like it so much.

Chan makes such amazing noises. Something about them is so tense, like compressed air or carbonation in a can, something that builds up to explode. Damn, Minho kinda hopes Chan explodes in his mouth. He almost feels tempted to laugh at himself, but he's too preoccupied sucking on Chan's nipples and tugging the waistband of his wet boxers to take a break.

Speaking of Chan's boxers, with enough tugging Chan gets the hint and slides them off, throwing them off the side of the bed where they land with a wet slap on the hardwood. Five days is not enough time for the water to affect the wood and also Chan's dick is _right_ there so Minho decides he doesn't care.

Chan's dick is a very nice dick, maybe on the upper end of average for length but where he really shines, Minho decides, is girth. He's thick; Minho's fingers struggle to fit around the base where he holds it and just takes it in. With his eyes. It's so nice. He looks at Chan, he looks incredibly turned on, which also sort of means he looks dumb but in a way that makes Minho shiver.

"Feel free to pull my hair. I like it," Minho informs Chan before he just takes Chan in. With his mouth this time.

Chan groans immediately, and his hand finds its way to Minho's hair. Minho hums around Chan in approval which only leads to more groaning from Chan. It's a beautiful cycle. The way Chan's cock stretches Minho's lips is obscene, his jaw aches almost immediately as he starts bobbing but that only turns him on more, makes him bob faster. It’s stupid and it quickly becomes a mistake when he has to pull up after gagging a little, a thick wet sound sneaking past his mouth without his permission before he's coughing.

Chan rubs soothingly at Minho's scalp with fingers attached to his weirdly long arms that make the reach possible with Minho partially sitting up. Minho, like he frequently is with Chan, is grateful for it but also would like to tease him about it. Unfortunately, he's too busy finding his breath again to do much teasing. Chan’s fingers migrate, sweeping across Minho's flushed cheeks and wiping tears that Minho hadn't even noticed were gathering.

"God, look at you," Chan says in a voice just above a whisper, his eyes focused solely on Minho's face like he might not even realize he's speaking, "Look at you. I've wanted you for so long."

Chan's wide eyes on him, and Chan's words loose on his tongue like that make Minho feel both clocks inside him tick, tick, ticking. The world is ending and Chan _wants_ him, has _wanted_ him. A million questions bubble on his tongue but the pot will boil over and splash and they will both be burned because Minho doesn't have enough _time_ for anything to simmer.

So he doesn't let it.

Minho crashes down into Chan and kisses him desperately, hungrily yes, but also with all the urgency of the end of the world. With the kind of urgency that can only exist with prologue, a before, the kind of before that gives stakes. This is Chan, and this is Chris, and the world is ending, and this moment is what they have.

Maybe in the morning, Minho can beg Chan to tell him more, to enlighten him to what that even means, but now Minho is just going to meet him where he's at. Meet him with matching tongue and teeth and desire and want and need.

Chan's hands clutch at Minho desperately; if he had claws they would be digging into Minho's skin in their search for purchase. Minho arches his back and sits his ass down until he can grind against Chan's erection in a way that makes them both gasp into their kiss. Chan's hands find Minho's ass and squeeze, pulling his cheeks apart and stretching the worn, damp underwear. Chan snaps at the waistband and Minho huffs into his mouth.

"Okay okay I get it," Chan has the audacity to chuckle, a breathy thing, while Minho awkwardly wiggles out of the wet fabric. He sighs when they’re gone; he didn't realize how uncomfortable it was with the wet fabric rubbing against him until it was off but now he feels free. He hopes he doesn't get a rash in the next five days.

Chan pulls him back down and it's much the same as the minute before but also a hundred times better now that Minho can feel the hot press of Chan's cock against his taint, curving against the crevice of his ass. Minho's grateful he remembered to shave his ass this weekend and also that he will never have to shave his ass again.

Chan is so warm, his mouth against his, his chest reverberating with sound underneath Minho, his cock curving against him, his fingers prodding at Minho's hole. They seperate enough for Chan to crawl to the end of the bed and lean his top half off to reach his bag and pull out a bottle of lube and a condom.

"Presumptuous aren't we?" Minho asks with a raise of his eyebrows.

Chan laughs, in the way he always does when he's laughing at himself, "Not really I swear, I also brought my fleshlight." Minho laughs at him too.

'What about the condom then?" Chan makes a face like he's been busted.

"I'd prefer the term hopeful over presumptuous." Minho laughs at him again and pulls him back down to kiss him some more. He can't help it; with all the saliva and sucking, Chan's lips almost don't seem dry anymore. Minho pulls his legs up to wrap them around Chan's back. He's not the most flexible person, but he's more flexible than a lot of people - certainly more flexible than Chan - and the stretch isn't so bad.

Chan squeezes Minho's thighs in approval before groping his ass again with something more than approval. His fingers trace the cleft of Minho's ass, letting dry fingers sweep teasingly against Minho's hole only to have them leave and return chilly and slick with lube. Minho can't help but shiver and gasp into Chan's mouth.

Chan seems to get that this, the gasping lazy kisses, is going to become a theme the more Chan works Minho up and open and so Chan's lips trail down to nibble on Minho's neck. Minho's left panting, staring at the wooden beams of the ceiling as Chan's index finger probes him.

It's not long before he adds another finger, and Minho releases a breath he didn't realize he had been holding to relax around Chan. Minho doesn't have toys, he doesn't have a fleshlight or Hyunjin's collection of dildos and insertables, Minho has his hand and the nights he spends with another person. So Minho has bottomed, he has experience bottoming and he likes it, but it's not a regular enough thing that he doesn't have to fight his body at least a little bit to calm down and relax and let him get fucked. But man Minho really wants to be fucked right now, so he'll be damned if he can't get his fucking asshole to chill enough to fit Chan's cock inside of him.

He'll probably be damned in five days either way.

Chan's fingers crook and scissor until finally they skirt the edge of Minho's prostate and he can't help but moan, desperate and wanton.

"Bingo," Chan murmurs against Minho's neck because he's the _worst_ but Minho doesn't have time to make fun of him before he's moaning again from Chan's circling fingers. Chan's fingers stay like that, a relentless teasing pattern of massaging just around Minho's prostate in the most delicious circles: just skirting the most sensitive spots and never applying enough pressure to his rim. Minho doesn't need to ask to know it's deliberate, that Chan's doing this to work him up and Minho is reluctant to beg because he knows what that would sound like.

Still he doesn't have much of a choice when he's this desperate.

"Please Chan, harder harder please," Minho sounds even more fucked out than he expected but luckily Chan seems into it from the way his fingers stutter inside of him. Immediately they increase their pace and there's more pressure on Minho's rim, driving him mad.

Chan's lips leave Minho's neck when he pulls back to watch Minho's face as he fucks him with his fingers, Minho can only imagine how debauched he must look based on the way his voice had sounded. Minho makes hazy eye contact with him and Chan looks unholy too, messy and flushed, his body held in tensed lines from arousal, from holding back and but also more relaxed than Minho can remember seeing him in a long time. Minho wants him to not hold back anymore, and his dick twitches where it's leaking between them at just the thought.

"God Chan, fuck me," Minho moans on the next thrust of Chan's fingers and Chan somehow manages to look surprised before he's closing his mouth and opening it again.

"Yeah, I'll just- condom," Chan mumbles pulling his fingers from Minho and Minho gasps.

"No need," Minho has to pause to suck in a breath, "just get inside me."

"Are you sure?" Chan asks with big imploring eyes, earnest, but Minho can see the way his hands shake as he grabs a pillow to push under Minho's back.

"Yes, it's the end of the world just let me feel you." If possible, Chan's eyes go even darker with intent, with arousal, with something Minho knows but can't quite put his finger on. Minho doesn't have the time or mental capacity to think about it because Chan is groaning something fierce and letting his forehead drop against Minho's sternum.

"You're going to be the death of me."

Minho huffs a laugh, "we only have five days anyway."

Chan barely separates them to press in. He stays close and it makes everything go slower but it also makes everything feel magnified. Every centimeter of Chan sliding into Minho, even the shaky breath Minho makes himself release, every press of Chan's lips on Minho's chest and ribs, it's all so much.

Minho takes a breath and hiccups another smaller one when Chan's hand finds where his is curling into the sheets. Chan's hand is warm and clammy and still rough compared to Minho's. It grounds him, to be able to grip onto Chan, it makes Chan work even harder, supporting himself with one bent arm somewhere near Minho's shoulder, but it’s worth it because Minho finally relaxes.

The stretch gives way to the bulging weight that fills Minho up, and when Chan finally pulls back, just a bit, just enough that he can rock back and forward, Minho feels eaten alive. Chan is consuming Minho the way a fungus does a tree - or maybe not, Minho got a D in environmental science.

Minho feels like he's being consumed in the way that Chan is giving him something that Minho can't get enough of, and Minho knows he could easily lose himself in the pursuit of. Because he needs more.

Minho grabs onto Chan's hand again with both hands and brings it up as he gasps and sighs. Each breath feels unplanned, like his own respiratory system is surprising him. He clasps Chan's hand between two of his own and turns his eyes to Chan's dark ones as if he might pray, as if he might beg for forgiveness but instead all he wants is:

"More, more, more Chris, please."

Chan gets it, he rackets up his pace until his hips are a restless wave of motion pulling back, sliding in, consuming.

Minho has never felt quite like this during sex, like his skin isn't just on fire, like his skin _is_ the flame. His back arches off the bed and his chest collapses back down out of sync with his own breaths but in the rhythm of Chan's thrusts, like that’s the new metronome his body follows. Minho feels his mouth open and without thinking he brings Chan's hand, clasped in his own, to his mouth to suck on Chan's fingers.

Chan moans at the sight and the sound goes right to Minho's aching cock.

He's never felt like this, maybe it's the end of the world, maybe it's Chan, but Minho can't remember a time in his life when the coil in his stomach was wound this tight and his legs spasmed quite like this.

Minho clenches down on Chan's cock and moans around Chan's fingers and thinks about being eaten away from the inside out, about being devoured. And he thinks about Chan cumming inside him and painting Minho's guts with his seed. And for a sharp, fleeting, moment of clarity, Minho thinks to himself 'I want to cum from Chan's cum.'

Suddenly Minho has a goal and everything, his leaking cock, his own arousal dancing on his skin and deep in his gut all of it becomes secondary to his goal of making Chan cum. From the way Chan is panting, breathless of Minho but still moving, Minho won’t sit back. He squeezes his legs tighter around Chan and clamps down around him, squeezing Chan's cock in a way that Minho hopes is on the right side of painful. Chan moans something beautiful and Minho knows he's struck gold.

That's what Chan's pleasure is, Minho decided. For someone who holds himself back so much, bringing Chan to orgasm is unearthing a jewel, or maybe like the way paleontologists find old bones but Minho doesn't think Chan would like that comparison much. It's like this: Minho moaning extra loud to remind Chan how good he makes him feel. It’s like this: Minho sucking Chan deeper into him, depriving himself of breath just to suck on his fingers just a hair tighter, a second longer, unveiling the way Chan comes undone, red faced, panting, groaning, absolutely breathtaking.

"Fuck I'm close," Chan murmurs in a voice so gravely and fucked out Minho can't help but shiver. Chan tries to take his fingers from Minho's mouth to jerk him off but Minho takes it back again.

"No, I wanna cum from your cock," Minho tries to explain in hasty slurring words before bringing Chan's fingers back to his mouth. Chan's cock jerks inside of Minho and he lets out a groan so guttural and broken Minho knows he's done it.

Chan squeezes his eyes closed and lets his mouth hang open when he comes and his flushed euphoric expression is the last thing Minho sees before he's closing his own eyes and letting himself really _feel_ every sensation in his body. The heat on his skin, the slide of Chan and him together, the aching of his own cock, and of course the thrum of Chan's pulsing cock releasing inside of him.

And that’s what does it for him.

Minho comes untouched from the feeling of Chan's stuttering hips and he whines Chan's name as he paints the space between them white with his own release.

Chan pulls out after a moment and Minho doesn't have it in him to protest more than a shaky exhale but Chan seems to get it because a moment later he's lowering himself to lay down on top of Minho like a large, heavy, sweaty, dirty, blanket. It's very grounding.

Minho curls his arms around Chan and finally opens his eyes to see the ceiling and the edges of Chan's hair where it's drying. The rooms smells of sex and sweat and traces of the salt and brine of the river. Minho drinks in the scent hungrily, and can't stop his breath from increasing as he drinks in more and more Chan lifts his head.

He doesn't ask if Minho is crying, he doesn't ask why, and Minho is grateful because he doesn't have any answers. Instead, Chan leans down and kisses Minho's cheeks, the left and the right and Minho connects their lips together before Chan can lean away.

Everything is so uncertain and yet predetermined. Minho is powerless. But at least he's not alone, at least Chan is here to be like he always is, steady and warm.

Chan's kiss is like that, steady and warm. It’s all slow kisses that aren't lazy, that are full of intention even as they roll to their sides and tug the blankets over their bare shoulders.

Tomorrow will be a new day. With Chan.

Maybe Minho can find out just how long Chan has wanted to do this. Maybe he can learn why Chan isn't already gone.


	2. Day 2 - Chan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They’ve only stayed a day but they both know which bed is “theirs.” They’ve made their bed and they’ll lie in it. Together.  
> Something about Minho makes Chan feel both inexperienced and cocky at the same time. Minho’s fluttering touch pulling off his shirt, shirking his pants, makes him feel almost virginal, bashful, over-excited to see skin he’s seen before. It’s different, though, this time. Last night it was dark and there was an urgency that isn’t gone now but has maybe slowed down. He can really see Minho: the dark swish of his lashes, the blush tickling his ears and chest, rosy nipples and soft warm skin so full of life in the light streaming through the windows. Golden hour paints Minho in warm tones like he’s its muse. It’s enough to make Chan overeager, excited because everything feels new when Minho's the one doing it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tags have been updated to mind the new ones!!!  
> Big ole' thanks to my betas Kirby and Nova for helping me get this one out!

**Day - 2**

Chan wakes to the sun streaming through the windows, washing over his puffy face, and to the sound of the shower running. His first instinct is to roll over and groan petulantly about it being too early. Without an audience he has no reason not to, so he does just that. He even kicks his legs a little for extra effect but that only makes him wake up more. Oh well, he's never been someone who can go back to bed easily anyway.

Actually, he's never been someone who can go to bed easily in general; it takes him hours. Chan goes to bed when the rest of the world starts waking up. After getting home from the bar around three or four in the morning Chan finds himself restless most nights. Around six is when he'll sometimes get to talk to Minho, around seven is when he'll hear Changbin getting up for his job, but it isn't until he hears Changbin leave at eight-thirty that Chan ever falls asleep. Except for last night.

Last night Chan had fallen asleep holding Minho. Minho had still fallen asleep first, let his mouth go lax in their kiss and puffed hot breath on Chan's face, but Chan hadn't been far behind. Chan feels distinctly Paramore and middle school thinking of Minho as an exception but he can't think of another way to say it. Maybe he'll find out tonight for sure. Tonight, tomorrow, the next day, and the day after that. With Minho every day until the end if he plays his cards.

How did Chan get so lucky? This is the part where Seungmin or Changbin would make fun of Chan endlessly but they were already gone. Thinking of them hurt a disproportionate amount, Chan thought, although he didn't quite know why. What should it be in proportion to, what factors should years of friendship, of found family, be in conversation with? How they left? What they left behind? Chan's own hours ticking down?

Changbin had been gone when Chan woke up. His happy ending, and all the happy endings were gone by the time the rest of the population woke up. When Seungmin left however, Chan had been there. He had watched Seungmin’s silk note catch flame and burn so bright it blinded Chan, seen the way he had just been gone. He had watched Jisung too, two friends sent off in blazing lights. Like if a flare of light was a goodbye as much as a sign of life. A sign of a life that once was. A memory.

Chan sits up. The sheets are sticking to his sweaty skin, so he pulls them off and looks down. He really needs a shower. Not only is he sweaty and stale from sleep, but there's dried cum - Minho’s dried cum - still glued to his happy trail and stomach, and beyond the remnants of sleep and sweat he has the dirt and debris that always manage to stick with him after time spent in a body of water. Maybe? A fragment of seaweed on his stomach? He can’t be sure but it's small and flakey and green-brown in the way a lot of marine plant life is. Maybe the small specs scattered on his thighs where his boxers had clung to his skin is just dirt but he can’t be sure. He just needs a shower. 

If he concentrates, Chan thinks he can hear the vibrating sound of Minho’s singing in the shower through the door and he wonders how weird it would be if Chan tried to join him. Just as Chan is working up the courage, ‘they already fucked it can’t be that weird- right?’ Chan hears the water shutting off. 

Minho steps out of the bathroom skin flushed from the hot water, hair wet and dripping down his neck and with a towel around his waist, to Chan still sitting, naked and dirty, cross-legged on the bed. 

“Early bird gets the hot water,” Minho says, sticking out his tongue petulantly.

Chan mock-gasps, “You wouldn’t!”

“You’ll have to get off your ass and find out for yourself,” Minho teases as he walks away, not making an effort to look back, which is fine because Chan watches him anyway. It’s only when Minho pulls his clothes from his weekend bag that Chan actually processes that Minho intends to change in front of him. Despite having his dick inside of him last night, and literally currently being naked on the bed, this new development makes Chan feel weirdly shy and he all but runs to the bathroom because of it. 

God, what even is his life right now?

The bathroom mirror is still fogged up from Minho’s shower and so Chan is spared what he can only assume would be the truly harrowing experience of looking at his own reflection as he waits for the hot water to heat up. Felix would probably have a thing or two to say about negative self-talk but he was gone so that didn’t matter. Oh. 

It kept hitting him like this, the reminder of his friends and his own limited time. Not for the first time since he agreed to go with Minho, not even for the first time since he woke up Chan found himself thinking about the gift he had buried almost as soon as he had found it. 

He stepped into the water and was grateful that Minho was a dirty liar and there was still hot water. The real question was how long it would last. He scrubbed himself quickly with the shampoo because Chan knew what every man over sixteen knew: that every shampoo was already, secretly, a 2-in-1 body wash and shampoo product. He cleaned his skin and hair and stood in the water as long as he could before the hot water ran out and just let it hit him. The water pressure was nice: really strong but Chan liked it when it was like this, landing heavily on him the way downpours hit windows.

Chan finished his shower when the first blast of icy water hit his skin and he turned off the spray with his lightning-fast, if not a little clumsy, reflexes. He stood dripping in the shower for a moment before stepping out onto the still-damp bath mat, and looking past his still-foggy reflection, and grabbed the other towel hanging on the back of the door to dry off. 

When he emerged from the bathroom the room was deserted and he dressed in peace. Boxers, a plain black shirt, and jeans; after years of working at the bar somehow this had become his casual clothes. He reached for his socks from the smaller compartment on the outside of his bag and came face to face with a few reminders. 

His dismal collection of sex toys, the still unused box of condoms, six pairs of black ankle-length socks, and there, crumpled and shoved in the back, sat his slip. It mocked him, crumpled in his bag the same way it had been under his tongue when he woke up yesterday.    
The ultimate condescension of a pity prize. 

Chan grabs his socks and zips the compartment shut with far more force than necessary. 

Minho isn’t sitting at the table when Chan comes out of the room. Instead, he’s sitting on the floor in front of the open sliding glass door with his bent legs outside and his arms wrapped around his knees with a half-full glass of water next to him on the wood. Minho turns to Chan with serious eyes and a prominent pout. 

“There's no coffee,” Minho whines, and Chan is half tempted to laugh but instead he plays along. 

Chan gasps dramatically, “Oh No! No Coffee? What ever shall we do?” 

Minho narrows his eyes at him and Chan is suddenly grateful he’s not in kicking distance. 

“Yah! This is serious!” Minho is already giggling by the end of his own sentence. 

They decide to find a store to get some of the things Ms. “Soojin” didn’t think to stock, like coffee, more dog food for Maple, and a source of protein that wasn’t the mediocre chili they had already eaten last night. 

Google says the closest down is twenty kilometers away which Minho complains about but they both know it’s not that far in the grand scheme of things. It’s actually closer than Chan thought it would be considering how middle-of-nowhere the house felt. Minho fidgets with Chan’s phone, picking a playlist, and Chan watches him out of the corner of his eye. It’s not the safest, but there are no other drivers on the road, and the road itself is rather flat and straight. 

Minho is fidgety, queuing too many songs for the length of the drive, pulling at the cuffs of his slightly-too-short sweater sleeves, and constantly reaching up to flick his hair from his eyes. It’s gotten too long, so it catches against his thick dark lashes and makes him blink and shake his head like a cat trying to shake something off its head. It’s shaggy in the back. This is probably the longest Minho’s hair has been since Chan has met him, and the first time he’s seen it this soft brown color. Chan remembers that his hair was blond when he met Minho. Blond and swept off his face in a posh elegant swoop, nothing like the soft brown bangs hanging on his forehead now, most of the way dry and already fluffy. It made him look a little younger - softer around the face - and served to make his already dark eyes look even darker. 

Chan is forced to focus his attention fully back on the road when it starts to get more curvy, winding around outbursts of trees and gravel driveways. As they get closer the houses become more common but nowhere near as tightly packed as the crowded townhomes in the city or even the green lawns of the suburb Chan grew up in. The houses are small but the land around them is huge, sprawling and populated with gardens and crops and tall plants, barren in winter but the stalks remain. Maybe some of the trees Chan is seeing bear fruit, but now they don’t even have leaves really, besides the last clinging of red-brown from fall. 

The town is just three intersections, a main road and its three cross roads but after the third crossroads there’s a grocery store. The parking lot only has two other cars in it, but the neon sign behind the glass door buzzes an assertive “Open 24hrs.” As they get out they spot others, a man and woman leaving the store each carrying a couple of bags. They stop short seeing Chan and Minho and Chan gives a small wave. 

“Hi,” Chan says because he doesn’t know what else to say. 

“Hi,” The woman says before looking at her companion, “um, I’m Victoria and that's Kibum.”

“Chan,” Minho says, pointing at him, “and I’m Minho.” He points to himself. The man Victoria said was Kibum makes a face when Minho says his name but covers it well. Victoria transfers a bag to her other hand to squeeze his arm comfortingly. 

“I had a friend with that name,” Kibum says with a polite but fake smile. Oh. 

“I’m sorry,” Minho says, immediately.

“Thanks.”

“Um, was there someone working as a cashier?” Chan asks, because he’s never been good at knowing the right thing to say when things get serious. Victoria shakes her head and Kibum opens his mouth before closing it again, seeming to hesitate before answering. 

“There's not, but just a warning there is a,” he blinks and looks at Victoria's face seemingly looking for a word, “a marker?” he finishes, uncertain.

“A token,” Victoria corrects quitely and Kibum nods. 

“There's a token inside but no other people. There's a note on the door that’s helpful.”

“Thank you, we’ll be sure to take a look at it.” Minho’s voice bleeds a warmth Chan knows isn’t usually given to strangers. Minho is polite and he can make small talk but he isn’t warm, he isn’t a beacon of comfort or someone strangers immediately trust and open up to. Right now he sounds warm and his face is open and full of gratitude and Chan’s heart clenches at the sight. 

He looks beautiful and kind and Chan is so proud to be his friend. 

“Do you need help getting your things to your car?” Chan offers, only a moment too late. They shake their heads and thank him and they all nod their heads politely at each other, just a little stilted, but at the last moment Kibum reaches his hand forward and grabs Minho’s wrist. 

Victoria makes a confused noise that mirrors Chan’s own but he can’t focus on that or even what Kibum is saying because there, around his wrist, tied tightly like a friendship bracelet made at sleep away camp, is a slip. An ending uncertain, and he’s still here. Just like Chan. 

Except he’s not. Because instead of hidden in his luggage it’s there, around a dainty wrist, broadcasting it to everyone around him. Kibum is still here, and he’s squeezing Minho’s wrist and saying something that Chan only catches the tail end of. 

“-treasure it, and good luck.” 

“Thank you,” Minho says back with a sincerity Chan isn’t used to hearing from him. Kibum nods once, his eyes are lined with thick liner and his mouth is set in a firm line, and in the watery sunlight falling through the clouds, he looks more sure than anything. When he breezes past them to walk the rest of the way to their car his walk is sure too, confident with no careless or unsteady steps. 

Chan watches them go, open their car -  _ beep beep _ \- load their bags in the back seat and get in the front. Kibum sits passenger. 

Chan would have thought that someone that confident would be gone already. 

When he turns back around Minho is already mostly to the door and Chan has to jog to catch up to him and make it to the door at the same time. Kibum was right, there is a note on the door. 

_ Take what you need but please not more, hopefully what is left can help you. The key for the cage with the propane tanks is on the key ring at cashier four. Take care.  _

_ -Minjun _

Minjun, Soojin, Zeyu. People Chan will never get to meet, or thank, but that he has somehow gotten to know. 

They go through the store in an order. Minho has an  _ order _ for food shopping but even if Chan doesn’t have an order Minho’s makes sense so he has no complaints. They start with fresh produce, and they start slowly. They each put every item in the cart with a reluctance, a hesitation. They don’t want to be wasteful. Chan holds a Pink Lady apple and considers it, how many apples can they really go through in three and a half days? He grabs two, and then two more for Minho. 

They grow less hesitant. Minho gets some salad mix and cooking spinach. Minho decides on some dishes and Chan is more than happy to agree; he’s not a picky eater and not a very good cook. They go through the fish and meat sections and Chan is proud of his own restraint in not getting all the pork belly their little basket can carry. 

Cookies and bread and nearly two-day-old baked goods, some cereal, a few canned goods. Coffee. Thank goodness. 

Everytime Chan breaks off from Minho to go down an aisle and pick something up himself, something for a recipe or something Minho just remembered that they need, it strikes him how small he feels. He feels like a kid around adults but instead he’s an adult around nothing. This isn’t a ghost town, but somehow he thinks that might be more comforting. 

It’s Chan who tells Minho they need a propane tank for the grill on the deck that Minho hadn’t even noticed but that Chan had picked up on immediately. He dumps the newly acquired tartar sauce into their cart, (they had to upgrade from the baskets) and jogs to cashier four. There's a balloon behind the counter swirling with smoke, and if he walks around the conveyor belt he’ll see one of those rocks like Seungmin’s or Jisung’s or Changbin’s. This is the token that Victoria and Kibum mentioned. 

Chan doesn’t walk around the counter, doesn’t read the name written there. 

He grabs the key ring from the converter belt and walks out the doors around to the side where the propane cage is.

Something about the sight of the cage and the rattle it makes as he unlocks it sticks in his head.

It reminds him of that book,  _ They Cage The Animals at Night. _ He’d been too young when he read it. Maybe he had just been behind his classmates in literary appreciation or reading comprehension but he doesn’t think that’s quite it because he can’t remember any of his friends in year six really getting the book. It was one in a decent sized collection of books he had read too young, or not gleaned quite enough out of, books he promised himself he would revisit. 

Books like  _ 1984 _ ,  _ The Tao of Pooh _ ,  _ Infinite Jest _ ,  _ Cat’s Cradle, Things Fall Apart _ and different books that he regrets not paying closer attention to, like  _ The Secret History _ ,  _ The Awakening _ ,  _ The Screwtape Letters _ . He always promised himself that he would go back to them, that he would pay them due process and revisit them to fully understand why certain images from them stuck with him after years and years even if he forgot the rest. Promised that he would learn the lessons hidden in them and he would be wiser when he did.

He wanted to know why the boy, crouched and hidden in the bush, never left his subconscious when so much else did, or why he remembered with a humiliating cinch at his heart the boy standing bare on the table to be punished for something beyond his control. He wanted to know what that was supposed to tell him about himself. He was going to finally be able to connect the dots of significance in the faint freckles on his shoulders and understand something new.

And then he never did, and now he’s almost out of time. He could do it, pick one or two and do nothing but read for the days he has left and he would be wiser, but for who? For what? 

All Chan can do is think of Minho on that first night, with his arms spread wide to the setting sun, his body prostrated to sinking light and the serene smile Chan couldn’t see but could hear in his voice when he commanded Chan to stop planning, to stop living for a future that would never come. 

All Chan had was this. Here and now.

He lugs the propane tank to the car, probably using too much of his back and not enough of his legs, and loads it in the trunk with a lot of grunting. Minho still isn’t out of the store so he goes looking for him. And he finds him. Staring at the token at Cashier four.

Minho has walked around the counter, evident from the way he’s holding the stone, letting his fingers trail over the engraving. He looks back at Chan, confirming that it’s just him, before turning back to the stone. The shopping cart is abandoned on the other side of the counter, one bag loaded another abandoned halfway through. Chan can imagine Minho’s curiosity getting the better of him mid-task. 

Chan walks to the cart and loads up the second bag and grabs a third paper bag, being careful to load the more sturdy items on bottom. 

“Is it Minjun?” Chan asks after a moment, not looking up from the spring mix he’s putting in the bag. 

“Choi Minjun, an ending uncertain,” Minho reads dutifully back. It’s not what Chan asked and for some reason Chan feels tense, on edge. He doesn’t get why Minho is lingering, holding the stone of a man he never met. It feels impolite almost, like grieving too loudly at someone else’s relative’s funeral when you didn’t know them well. 

Chan’s out of things to bag, and out of places to look but at Minho and the token. So he looks. 

Minho has put it on the conveyor belt. Chan remembers the keys then and fishes the keys to the propane tank cage from his pocket and puts it next to the stone. Minho’s eyes are focussed on the balloon, the swirling smoke there. That too feels rude but Chan finds himself drawn to it as well. 

It makes him think of the phase when Jisung had gotten into candle meditation, the practice of meditation for those who found basic meditation difficult where one focuses their eyes on a flickering candle light and lets their mind calm from there. Chan’s mind calms looking at the vortex: no more books from his childhood or thoughts of his friends, or Minho less than a metre away. Just the smoke collapsing in on itself again and again, somehow different each time. He thinks he might be able to lose a great deal of time like this. He’s snapped out of it by Minho.

“I wonder, when we go, if the smoke will be black.” 

It hits him like a punch. Chan’s eyes snap to Minho but Minho isn’t looking at him, he didn’t say this for a reaction and somehow that makes it even worse. It’s even worse when he speaks more. 

“Maybe that’s too predictable, maybe instead our smoke will be corrosive and it will eat away at the balloon until it pops and the smoke is blown away with the wind.” 

If there was any air in Chan’s lungs he would be making a noise. 

“Maybe there will be no balloons. Maybe there will just be rocks and dirt for the bad endings.” 

Chan finally,  _ finally _ , finds his voice: “Are you serious right now?”

Minho finally looks at Chan and he furrows his brows confused by the reaction. 

“I mean, I was just thinking out loud,” Minho says with a shrug and it makes it hurt even more. 

“Well you shouldn’t,” Minho flinches and Chan knows he’s being rude but he’s confused and it’s swarming and buzzing in him in a way that  _ feels _ a lot like anger, “you aren’t  _ corrosive _ , and you aren’t some monster and it’s not black and white.” 

Minho scoffs, “I don’t know Chan, Happy endings and Bad endings, It feels pretty black and white.” 

“Well it’s not, what about the uncertain ones? The gamble?”

Minho waves his hand like he’s batting away a fruit fly, “Even then there’s no so-so ending, there’s no whatever forever. There's just different chances for good and bad. Better and worse odds, but you still land in on or the other.” 

“Well,” Chan stumbles with his words and he wants to stamp his foot like a child, “ Well who’s to decide what a good or bad ending is or even who’s worthy.” 

Minho is looking at Chan like he can’t decide is Chan is dumb or just stupid. “It’s the universe Chris, literally who better to decide.” Chan opens his mouth but Minho continues, “but beyond that it doesn’t matter. It did decide. It’s been decided, and you or I can’t do anything about it.”

“Well,” Chan is grasping at straws. He’s mad but he can’t quite capture it. He’s mad at Minho for being so whatever about everything, at himself for being a coward for so many years at the universe for fucking everything up, “well, fuck the universe.” 

Minho looks at Chan for a moment and then he laughs and looks away. 

“Well, that's great Chan, I’m glad you’ve decided you are better than the inevitable.”  Minho walks around the counter and Chan backs ups slightly without thinking about it. He doesn’t know what to say, but when Minho picks up two of the bags and starts walking towards the exit Chan grabs the last bag and chases after him. 

“I don’t think I'm better than the inevitable. I just don’t think you should think like that, you are just still here, that's not some judgement test on you that you failed.” 

“Isn’t it? If there are happy endings and people already gone then those people deserve those endings. If there is undeserved and deserved then there is judgement,” He looks back at where Chan is struggling to keep pace with him on the walk to the car and looks away at the look, “listen I know this isn’t great to hear but I’m not the one making the rules here. We’re still left so we weren’t deserving of a happy ending.” 

Chan stops walking and Minho walks a few more paces before he realizes and turns to face him. The metres between them feel impossibly wide. 

“We don’t know that. You shouldn’t assign morality to it.” It sounds weak even to Chan’s ears. Minho looks like he would throw up his hands if he wasn’t already holding bags. 

“Oh my god Chris, I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings but it’s just the truth. Even if there's no bad endings everyone else got a good one and we didn’t. That means something.”

“What about Kibum, what about people with the slip who don’t leave?”

“Then they deserve it too! If they are too much of a coward, or too selfish to go, to take the opportunity we weren’t given then yeah, they deserve whatever is coming for the rest of us.” It makes Chan choke.

“What so, you think we deserve this?” Chan asks, his voice rising. 

“Yeah! I do!” There's silence after Minho says it. Chan says nothing, Minho says nothing but after a moment he continues in a softer voice. 

“I know exactly why this fate is mine, I’ve known since I saw Hyunjin’s slip exactly why I didn’t wake up with one. Maybe fate made a mistake with you, I don’t know your life, but I know they didn’t with me.”

“Minho you aren’t-” 

“Can we just go home?” Minho interrupts in a small voice that steals all the remaining air from Chan’s lungs. He sounds defeated. Chan can rage at the universe all he wants, he can stomp his feet and scream and scream but he can do that because he hasn’t quite accepted it. Because he doesn’t have to, back home, twenty kilometres away, there’s some writing on soft fabric-like parchment that will give him a way out. Minho doesn't have that. 

“Yeah, I can drive.” 

The drive is almost entirely silent. On the first day they saw cars every now and then, but today is one more day gone in a more deserted place and the roads are barren. Chan doesn’t see a single other car the whole drive. 

The silence lets the cacophony in Chan’s head get even louder, guilt and anger and remorse and Minho’s voice repeating over and over, ‘too much of a coward, or too selfish to go,’ like an unforgiving mantra. 

That’s Chan, the coward. About so many things. Life is exhausting in that way, how so many opportunities will just pass you by unless you have the courage to take them. Chan might have used up his courage too soon, or maybe he used his fair share when he left home, left Australia. Or maybe he used it when he convinced Brian to take him on as a part time board worker in his studio even though he had almost no experience. Or maybe Chan used up the last of it when he walked up to Minho and introduced himself as ‘Chris.’ The point is, these last couple of years, bravery has been hard to come by. 

Too cowardly to go, too cowardly to tell Minho why he doesn’t want to. 

“I’m sorry I got so intense back there. I shouldn’t have raised my voice.” Chan can feel Minho turn to look at him instead of the window and Chan squeezes the wheel and keeps his eyes on the road before continuing, “I still don’t believe that you deserve a bad ending.” 

Minho laughs a little and puts his feet up on the dashboard. Chan hadn’t even realized that he had taken off his shoes. 

“You don’t even know why.” Minho says after a moment, he too seems to be looking out the windshield, avoiding eye-contact. 

“I don’t have to,” Chan says with conviction, “ I know you, I’ve been your friend for years, I know you are a good person.” 

Minho heaves a sigh, the kind someone takes after getting to the surface after being under the water for too long. 

“Thanks.” Chan doesn’t speak; he’s not expressly waiting for Minho to elaborate but Minho does anyway. “Maybe I’ll tell you about it later, when you tell me about some of the stuff you said last night.”   
Chan jerks the wheel in his shock and has to jerk it back very fast to avoid running them off-road and into a cornfield. Minho screams and grabs the oh-shit handles and presses his bare feet into the windshield in a way that will leave some serious footprints, but his scream turns into a laugh quickly and his grip slackens. 

“You’re gonna fucking kill us!” He laughs and Chan almost laughs with him but it’s just a long drawn out “ahhhhhhh.”

“Don’t distract me while I’m driving!” 

“It wasn’t a distraction!” 

“Then don’t scare me while driving!”

“I didn't realize that would scare you!” Minho shoots back but they’re both giggling hysterically. Chan’s heartbeat is loud in his ears but it can't overpower Minho’s delighted manic laughter from embedding itself in Chan’s brain. He wishes he could save it, and wishes it was 2010 so he could make a choppy poorly rendered version of it his ringtone on his slide phone. He wishes he could have recorded it and combined it with other sounds, maybe Felix and Seungmin gaming in the other room or Hyunjin talking on the phone to his mom and used in the intro to a song. He wants to hear it over and over again. 

It’s been two days and already the collection of noises Minho makes could fill a folder on his computer. This manic laughter, this morning’s snarky teasing, the way he giggled and shrieked into the empty night last night each time Chan caught him in the river. The way he hummed around Chan’s cock and moaned underneath him and the breathy little gasps that he released around Chan’s own fingers each time he fucked into him. 

How many more sounds of Minho’s could Chan fall in love with in the three days left?

They return to find Maple in front of the door again like yesterday. 

“Soojin should have gotten you a doggy door,” Minho says but Chan just shrugs and lets her in. Chan refills her bowl with the kibble they just bought for her and Minho finally gets to make a pot of coffee for them to share, even if it's early afternoon by now. 

Lunch is a quiet affair. They have a big fresh salad that Chan cuts the vegetables for and pan-cooked fish with lots of lemon and honey and mustard. They bring their plates out to the back deck, where there’s no table or chairs, but dark spots on the ground and scratches on the wood suggest furniture. 

“The furniture must be locked up for winter,” Chan says, after squatting down to get a closer look.

“Who needs ’em?” Minho says and sits on the few wooden stairs that give way to the grassy hill that gives way to beach grass and sand that gives way to water. Chan sits next to him and bumps their shoulders together before eating. 

He can’t really tell if they’re okay. He wants them to be okay. Chan doesn’t know what they are but he hopes that whatever they are they’re okay. 

“Wait wait wait,” Minho says and hurries to put his plate down and run back to the house. “Don’t start yet!” he shouts over his shoulder. Chan is left squinting against the glare in the windows to try and see him in the house but he can’t make out what he’s doing.

Last night when they arrived the sun had been behind the house, just leaving an adumbration of light and color over the river. In daylight it looked different. The water was bluer, but also more green. Not the blue-green of resort pictures but a darker blue and a murkier green, lighter than a lake but not by much. The current was more clear and Chan could track the direction but every so often he could swear he saw it shift. 

The water was  _ bright _ under the early afternoon sun, the crest of the almost-waves glittering in the light and making Chan squint. 

Minho comes back just as Chan is wishing he had sunglasses. 

“I almost forgot about these!” He’s got two tall cups full of ice and lime and mint and even without the years of working behind a bar Chan would be able to tell that they were Mojitos. Chan takes a glass from Minho with a raised eyebrow. 

“Are we day drinking now?” Minho laughs. 

“Feels appropriate don’t ya think? Simple lunch, gorgeous view, refreshing drink at the end of the world?” Chan laughs, and clinks his glass with Minho’s. 

“Don’t forget the good company!” 

“How could I forget the company!” Minho raises his glass, “to a beautiful end of the world, with good company.” 

Minho makes mojitos more tart than Chan does at work, but it’s fun because it’s different, because Minho made it for him and it doesn’t taste like memories of being on his feet for hours or people coming off the small dance floor covered in sweat or being flirted with by strangers Chan would never go home with. Chan doesn’t have a problem with other people having one night stands, but it’s just not his thing. He has to know a person. Had to know the person. Minho is the last person Chan is ever going to have sex with. 

That somehow makes the drink taste even sweeter.

Conversation flows easier after that, but it’s not just from the alcohol. There's a little alcohol but not nearly enough to really affect Chan so no, it’s something else. Something about the gesture, the toast, the way Minho smiled his small smug smile when Chan complimented him. Chan has always hated smugness. Cocky people made his own hackles rise and brought out the worst in him, and being around people like that made Chan defensive and aggressive and just not himself. That lasted until he met Jisung and Changbin and Seungmin and Minho. 

Changbin and Jisung were always two sides of the same coin, confident and insecure and funny. Their fake confidence never tripped any flags in Chan, and in fact he could feel himself becoming a better person after they fell in together. Seungmin was different in that he wasn’t too confident but he was determined and smug in a way that was off-putting at first but as Chan got to know him and realized what his motivations were - to rise above mediocrity and be able to help people - his determination and pride of his own achievements became charming to Chan. 

Minho is another story. He’s always another story, that’s always the thing. Minho isn’t loud, which isn’t to say he isn’t weird and hysterical and one of the funniest people Chan knows because he’s all of those things, but he’s not loud. He’s anxious a lot of the time, and he gets confident in very few things, and it’s in those things that Minho could be the most boastful, cocky, prideful person in the world and Chan would still be enchanted. But he’s not. He’s just quietly confident, quietly smug, a quirk of his lips and the crinkle in his eyes, and it’s enough. 

Chan has seen it when he’s seen Minho cook for Felix and Hyunjin, or told a joke that made someone crack up so much he snorted. He still remembers the look on Minho's face when their friends went to see the kids from Minho and Felix's free Saturday dance classes perform . 

It’s a good look on Minho. 

Maybe the flavors don’t  _ technically _ or  _ traditionally _ work together but Chan swears it works. The fresh tomatoes in the salad, the bite of the lettuce, the way the fish practically melts and falls apart on his tongue and the tartness of the mojito. It’s good. Especially when Minho laughs and leans forward to lick and kiss a bit of honey mustard glaze from the corner of Chan’s mouth. 

Chan moves the plate from his lap and he’s already trying to turn and catch Minho in a real kiss but Minho’s faster, already moving away to kiss each of his dimples. Chan can’t help but huff laughter from his nose and grin wider which he knows only makes them more prominent. 

Chan wants to retaliate, to push back and kiss the little mole on the side of Minho’s perfect nose but the soft grip of Minho’s hands on his shoulders stops him. Minho is always colder than Chan, and Chan can’t remember if that means he runs hot or cold but he does know that Minho’s fingers where the tips poke out of his sweater are cold and shocking on his skin. He grabs them. He’s not really holding Minho's hand, just his fingers, squeezing them against his own clammy overheated palm. Minho lets him and settles on Chan’s lap instead. 

“Hi,” Chan says dumbly, looking up at Minho. Minho is already a little taller than him but like this Chan really has to crane his neck. 

“Hey,” Minho says back, his top bunny teeth lightly resting on his bottom lip, failing to hold back a grin. 

Chan squeezes Minho’s fingers again. “What was that about?” 

“You had something on your face,” Minho says, “and you are about to have two more things on your face.” It’s such a line, corny and not even clever but Chan finds himself giggling as he leans in to meet Minho’s lips with his own. He can’t believe he’s doing this, that he can have this. 

In the light of day, in the brisk air he’s not used to but has grown to love, he has Minho in his lap and on his lips. It’s just them and the river and the river is quiet company right now. Minho pulls back after a minute to get off Chan’s lap so they can finish their lunch but after that it’s different. Chan feels himself pulled towards him and he doesn't fight it. He leans into him, curls up against his back for a quick snuggle, rests his hand on Minho’s thigh as they talk, lets Minho feed him the vegetables in his salad he doesn’t want to eat. 

It’s the easy kind of intimacy Chan has wanted for so long. 

“Do you know what happened with Felix and Jisung?” Minho asks and it takes Chan out of his fixation with the seam of Minho’s right pant leg. 

“Like, well what do you mean what happened?” 

“Ugh spare me the respect for privacy, they’re gone, you know I could tell Jisung liked him.” 

Chan laughs and it’s only a little strained, “Yeah Jisung liked him. A lot. At first I thought it was just a crush, you know like, well, with-” 

“With me. It’s okay, you can say it,” Minho says and Chan laughs for real this time, a fully bellied thing. 

“Yeah, so at first I thought it was another crush, and so I just kind of rolled my eyes but then months passed and it was still there. And then Felix dated that guy-”

“Lucas!” Minho interjects, he has turned to Chan now and is really invested in the story. 

“Yep, he dated Lucas and then they broke up and Jisung  _ still _ liked him and that's about when I realized ‘oh shit this isn’t just a little infatuation huh,’ and oh my god it was so cute.” 

“He was adorable!” Minho can’t help but chime in. “Like at Hyunjin’s birthday.” 

“Oh my GOD, Hyunjin’s birthday! I had forgotten but when he spent half the night in his lap I swear he almost fainted.” 

“So, what happened!” Minho asks leaning forward, Chan swears he can practically see the exclamation marks in his eyes. 

“What do you mean what happened?”

“How did the confession go!” 

Chan takes pause. Minho sounds so excited. 

“Minho, there was no confession. You probably would have heard if there was.” 

“Oh.” Minho leans back a little, “I just. I don’t know, I just thought that you would know.”

Chan pauses, a moment of silence maybe. Sitting across from each other like this, cross legged and close, Chan almost wants to reach out and hold Minho’s hands or maybe start one of the mirror exercises he learned in his high school acting class. A gust of wind exhales out from the river and Chan watches the way it makes Minho’s hair scuttle across his forehead. Minho is waiting for him to speak, Chan realizes but he doesn’t know what to say. 

How many things are left unspoken between them?

“He never did anything, never said anything, and when we woke up- when we woke up Felix was already gone.” 

Minho turns his head to look at the river and squint and shiver against the breeze. Chan is treated to the delightful sight of Minho’s side profile. 

“The universe, or fate, or god or whatever did this…” He pauses to gather something in himself before speaking again, “is greedy for taking them early.” 

“Greedy?” Chan asks. 

“Greedy and selfish.” Minho confirms. “Just taking them, giving them a happy ending or whatever but not the chance to say goodbye. If they’ve been so good, why can’t they have that?” Minho turns back to Chan and his eyes are sharp, glinting with something ferocious.

“And Kibum? People who have the chance to leave and don’t they’re selfish too?” Chan asks, feeling breathless. 

“Yes, selfish. Too self absorbed to let go and take advantage of something that has been given to them and not others.” Chan feels like he has been punched. 

Minho continues when Chan doesn’t have a rebuttal, “and I’m selfish too. I always have been.” Minho turns back to the river and Chan thinks he might be getting teary eyed. Suddenly Minho grabs the empty glass from between them and pulls an ice cube out. Just one, and he lifts it poised to throw it down the hill like a baseball pitch, but at the last moment he drops his hand. He clenches the ice in his lap. 

A small fist, water dripping through the cracks. 

Minho’s voice is strained when he speaks, white knuckles personified. “Everyone’s selfish, everyones trying to survive. We’re all wild animals.”

“I don’t think everyone is selfish,” Chan says after a moment. He braces, ready for impact, for Minho to fight back, to rage and disagree and for this to explode around them. He waits for the air to become too thick to breathe and for him to choke on it. 

Minho turns. His eyes are red and his cheeks are wet and his voice is softer when he speaks. “They are. They have to be, to survive.” 

Chan feels like he’s cleaning a wound he can’t see. He knows he has to be careful but he doesn’t know what flesh is delicate and what lacerations are fresh. 

“Trying to survive isn’t selfish, Minho.” Chan wants to touch him so badly, but his hand hesitates a handful of inches from Minho’s fist, just out of his orbit. Instead he promises him earnestly, “Staying alive doesn’t make you selfish.”

“We are wild animals.” Minho says with the same conviction, but not quite the same ferocity as before. 

Something in Chan gives, and his hand falls the last bit forward to cover Minho’s frigid fist. 

“We are wild animals,” Chan agrees, and he knows it’s true but this is true too, “but that doesn’t make us wrong.” 

Chan doesn’t know how the conversation got here. How Jisung’s feelings turned into this, turned into human nature and survival but if Minho needs to hear it he’ll say it over and over again until his tongue dries out and his voice fades.

“Trying to survive doesn’t make you selfish.” Minho's fist is small and frigid and his hands are wet and colder than the river when he opens his palm but Chan just grabs on tighter. Chan shivers when Minho's other hand comes to rest at his cheek. It's warm, and the contrast is enough to make him shiver but he doesn't shake it off.

"What if my continued survival hurts others?"

"Then I would say that that's unfortunate, but that doesn't make you selfish." Minho closes his eyes, a stuttering motion that Chan can't gauge; he can't tell if it's resignation or if it's something more like hope.

"Your life is worth more than someone else's discomfort." He covers Minho's hand on his cheek with his own, holding it there. His hands are a weighted blanket on each of Minho's, trying to ground him, or at least tie them together if he needs to float away.

"If we’re all selfish, then I’m selfishly glad you are here. I'll be selfish forever to keep you in my life."

"We don't have forever." Minho opens his eyes and Chan couldn't look away if he wanted to.

"Then for what we have left. If you'll let me."

Minho takes a shaky breath and nods. "For what we have left. For what we have left I'm all yours."

Their kiss tastes like citrus and salt and a promise. Not forever, but for everything else.

Their dishes are left to the breeze and the setting sun, a candy trail as they pull each other inside by the collar of Minho’s sweater and cold fingers digging into tensed forearms. They’ve only stayed a day but they both know which bed is “theirs.” They’ve made their bed and they’ll lie in it. Together. 

Something about Minho makes Chan feel both inexperienced and cocky at the same time. Minho’s fluttering touch pulling off his shirt, shirking his pants, makes him feel almost virginal, bashful, over-excited to see skin he’s seen before. It’s different, though, this time. Last night it was dark and there was an urgency that isn’t gone now but has maybe slowed down. He can really see Minho: the dark swish of his lashes, the blush tickling his ears and chest, rosy nipples and soft warm skin so full of life in the light streaming through the windows. Golden hour paints Minho in warm tones like he’s its muse. It’s enough to make Chan overeager, excited because everything feels new when Minho's the one doing it. 

And yet, with each of Minho’s responses Chan can feel himself grow more sure. The insistent fingers with which Minho strips him, the firm suction of Minho’s lips at his neck, the sense of desperation that mirrors Chan’s own, and of course the feeling of Minho’s erection poking his hip. It all feeds something in Chan, something that gives him the confidence to push Minho down and pull his legs up and ask him, without even stumbling over the words, 

“Can I eat you out?”

Minho’s enthusiastic nod and almost squeaky moan only spur him on. 

Chan stares at the tight pucker of Minho’s rim for a moment, taking it in before leaning in to lick a broad stripe up his crack across his hole to his taint. He’s rewarded with another squeaky moan. Chan focuses his attention on Minho’s sensitive rim, licking and sucking the delicate skin and encouraging the muscles to relax. He thrusts his tongue in a bit, knowing from experience that that isn’t the best part, but still he’s impressed with Minho’s ability to relax so quickly. Chan can feel Minho’s thighs twitching with tension from where Minho’s holding them up with arms hooked under knees, like if he let go they might crash together like magnets and crush Chan’s skull. 

It’s hot. Thinking about all the strength in Minho’s body and the way he restrains it and himself. It is Chan's own thinking, thinking about Minho, that distracts him, he finds his mouth wandering his kisses trailing higher until he’s sucked one of Minho’s balls into his mouth. Oops.

Chan can’t resist; Minho’s balls are just starting to stubble like the rest of him and taste musky and a little sweaty but not unclean, and they just sit so perfectly, full and unassuming under Minho’s dick. God Chan must really have it bad if he’s romanticising Minho’s balls at this point. Still, they are good balls, ones that Chan gets great pleasure in gently suckling and kissing until Minho is gasping and groaning above him.

Chan pulls back for a moment to accomplish two goals. The first is squashed immediately, looking at Minho: the gentle glaze over his eyes, the pink pink pink of his mouth, and the way his jaw just  _ hangs _ open, freeing his mouth to pant wet hot breath that Chan can imagine on the nape of his neck. He’s a vision beyond beauty and sex; he’s a vision, the kind of thing prophecies are designed over and dreams are recorded for and theoretical revolutions started because of. And Chan gets to see him, and know him, and so he has to experience him fully. 

The second goal is less fun; he locates last night’s abandoned lube half hidden under the bed and returns moments later, already missing his self-made dip in the mattress between Minho’s legs. Minho has stopped panting by the time he makes it back but his cock isn’t flagging, still hard and aching between his legs, curving towards his navel. It’s another thing he wants to kiss, so he does. 

Minho laughs when Chan kisses his belly button, ticklish or just entertained, but either way Chan cherishes it. A gorgeous raucous sound in the silence of the afternoon. Chan didn’t even think of putting on one of his two different sex playlists and it means more dead air between them but there isn’t really such a thing as dead air when there’s this much magnetism, this much electricity, this much  _ charge _ . Yes! That’s it! Charge, every touch of Chan’s fingers, every press of his lips, flick of his tongue is charged and Minho’s every reaction reflects that potential energy, the shock he feels. 

Chan touches him with that knowledge, and with the intent to flood Minho with pleasure. He wants Minho to white out when he comes, wants him to have the kind of orgasm that makes him shiver and shake and spasm like he’s been electrocuted. 

Chan mouths at the base of Minho’s dick with that intent, licks up it with that intent, sucks the sensitive skin under the head with that intent. Swallows him down with that intent. Opens his throat with that intent. Lubes up two fingers without taking a break to breathe with that intent. 

Chan gives the most mindful blowjob of his (apparently) short life. 

Chan slips two lubed up fingers into Minho easily, a rhapsodic moan and his cock twitching in Chan’s mouth the only response he gets. He holds them there, trying to let Minho get comfortable but one of the hands holding Minho’s legs back threads into Chan’s curls instead. Minho’s leg falls heavy across his shoulder and his hand clenches in his hair and his voice comes out hoarse and fucked out when he begs. 

“Move, please Chan, god-” and so Chan begins in earnest, with intention. 

Minho comes with his cock down Chan’s throat and Chan’s fingers massaging his prostate in smooth circles and figure eights and from the way his moans dies in his throat and are reborn a euphoric shout, from the way Minho’s legs twitch and his stomach flutters, Chan knows he achieved his goal. He pulls off and out of Minho while he’s still shivering and doesn’t think about how gross they both are or his own aching need before half falling on top of him and holding him close. 

Minho is solid. Chan doesn’t have to worry about him breaking under his weight as he noses into Minho’s neck. It’s a mess of sweat and Chan’s previous work but it’s still soft and smells like Minho. 

Sometimes when Chan would pick Minho and Felix up from dance classes Minho would smell like deodorant and cologne to cover up the sweat and Chan loved it. To begin to cover up that amount of exertion it took a lot of cologne and because of that, long after he dropped them off back at home (some days Chan was nothing more than an unpaid chauffeur for his friends) his car would still smell like Minho, that combination of sweat and Speed Stick and myrrh and tonka.

Right now Minho doesn’t smell like that, doesn’t smell like any kind of cover up, he smells like sex and sweat and Minho. 

Chan knows Minho is back to him when he feels a hand sneak to grab his ass, what little of it there is, and squeeze. He laughs into Minho’s neck and he can picture the smug little smile on Minho’s face. 

“Good morning sunshine,” Chan mumbles into the heated skin of Minho’s neck. Finally Minho laughs with him. 

“Goodnight moon,” Minho snarks back, punctuated with a weak slap to Chan’s ass that makes him laugh. It’s so Minho, nonsensical but perfectly logical at the same time, goofy and irreverent and Minho. 

Chan leans back, just enough to kiss the silly little grin of Minho’s face and stare at him after, his eyes sparkle like it’s their only job. 

“There you are,” Minho says softly into the space between them, and Chan would laugh at him but he knows the feeling, the relief of getting to see Minho’s face, warm and open after what they’ve done. “Come here,” he says, and pulls Chan back in with warm slick lips and a soft grip on his ass. 

Chan comes like that, kissing Minho and sharing air with Minho’s hands on his ass pulling his hips forward so he can rut slowly against Minho’s stomach. It’s unhurried and messy but it doesn’t need to be anything more when Chan is this close, this affected just by watching Minho fall apart. 

Chan manages one better than last night by making it to the bathroom and back with a wet washcloth so they don’t repeat the horrors of the way Chan woke up this morning, ungodly sticky and crusty. 

Outside the sun is setting and, instead of warm reds and pinks like the night before, the sky is purple dusk and the river is still. It looks like glass reflecting the grey-violet of the sky in murky tones. Minho pulls himself forward and pulls on fresh boxers and his sweater from before and looks at Chan like he should do the same so he does.

Chan’s boxers have little penguins on them and the sweatshirt in his bag is one he stole from his dad years ago and it’s still big on him. The inside isn’t too soft anymore, not that same plush as when he first took it but now it’s a new kind of soft, one that comes from being worn down and washed again and again. It’s comforting. Minho seems to share the same appreciation for comfort because he wraps the comforter that fell to the floor during their… activities around him like a particularly fluffy cape that he fastens by holding two corners of the duvet in one hand at his chest. 

Minho reaches the other hand out for Chan to take and he does, lets Minho lead him into the sun room, onto one of the low wide coaches there. 

Regrettably he has to let go of Minho’s hand but Minho forgives him when he realizes he’s just opening the glass door for Maple to trot back inside, tracking dirt.

Chan joins Minho on the couch and makes a sound like a squeak when Minho pulls him back between his legs and against his chest. Chan thinks about struggling, about flipping them around, but he’s tired and it’s nice to be held so Chan relaxes his head against Minho’s shoulder. He can’t remember the last time he was just held, when he could just relax and know someone would support him like this without having to look them in the eye, or even partially support himself.

After a few minutes or maybe longer of what could be considered dozing, Chan shuffles to his side, getting more comfortable against Minho and pulling his legs up. He has the odd feeling of wanting to play with Minho’s fingers, and it’s odd not because that’s a strange action, but odd because it’s one unfamiliar in his own body. He’s not used to being held, or wanting small creature comforts, or actually talking about what he feels. But maybe it’s time for all that to change, or at least to give it a try.

Minho’s hands are soft, softer than Chan’s own, without calluses and veins. No, instead Minho’s hands have short but sharp nails and soft skin. His fingers are cute, Chan decides, with a little chub on each finger under the knuckle. He starts to almost massage them. He’s no good at this, the whole intimacy thing; he hasn’t had much practice, but maybe he should have.

Maybe Chan should have agreed to more dates when coworkers asked, maybe he should have asked out every boy or girl or beautiful person who made him laugh. But he didn’t, so he just traces smooth paths on Minho’s palm and thinks about the lines there and what they might mean. Minho’s other hand brushes some of Chan’s hair back; it’s just getting long enough in the front to tuck behind his ears and so Minho does. 

Suddenly Chan is aware of Minho’s eyes, sleepy and unfocused on the side of his face. He musters all the courage in his body and it doesn’t leave quite enough left to look him in the eye but he figures it will have to do. 

“I’ve been half in love with you for years.” Chan’s voice is still hoarse from his earlier blowjob. Minho doesn’t move under him. 

“I’m starting to get that idea.” Minho squeezes Chan a little between his legs and it somehow manages to feel comforting. “I never realized until these last few days.” 

“To be fair, you weren’t supposed to realize it.”

“I still wish I had.” Minho’s other hand comes back to Chan’s face, to tilt it up so Minho can look him in the eyes. “Maybe then we could have had longer.” 

Chan leans in first, but it’s really less of leaning in and more of giving in, giving in to the pull of Minho’s lips and the hand under his chin, giving in and kissing Minho. Warm and soft and gentle but no less intense because of that. When Minho pulls back to kiss Chan’s dimples - again - Chan speaks. 

“Maybe we can still have more time.” When Minho doesn’t respond he elaborates: “after our five days.” 

Minho pauses. Somewhere in their kisses both of Minho’s hands had come to the sides of Chan’s face and he uses them to pull Chan’s head back a bit, to look at him when he speaks. His eyes are tired, they speak to resignation and exhaustion and something a little like pity. 

“No, Chan. Maybe you will, but I’m telling you right now, wherever I go after this, there won’t be anything half as pretty as you.”

It sinks in Chan, and this morning’s rage is back.

"What happened to not being wrong?" When Minho shakes his head minutely, Chan's heart sinks further, deeper into the rage.

"It's different, Chan. The judgment has been made, and it's different because I know exactly what I did. Who I hurt. I want to be like you, with your hope, but I just- I can't." Minho's hands fade away from Chan's face like a bad dream in the morning, slowly, until he's not really sure if they are still there, if he can still feel them holding onto him or if that's just a memory. And then they’re gone.

Minho shifts back. It’s not much, just a bit, just enough for Chan to feel it, Minho resting more heavily on the cushions and comforter, away from him.

Minho speaks before Chan can think of something to say, "You don't know what I've done."

"Then tell me." Chan meant for it to come out gentler, or maybe angrier, more sure. Instead, it comes out weak, a desperate plea, and maybe that's better. More honest.

Minho opens his mouth with his brows furrowed like he's about to argue but something passes over his expression and he closes his mouth. Instead, he relaxes his neck back on the arm of the couch and closes his eyes, the physical embodiment of giving up.

"Okay," Minho says, and again: "Okay." Chan isn't sure if he's allowed to touch Minho right now, if his touch would be welcomed and comforting or if it would be suffocating, but he wants to comfort Minho, to let him know that Chan isn’t going to run away. He settles for gently placing his hands on Minho’s shoulders, tentatively rubbing them back and forth. 

Minho surprises him by pulling Chan down on top of him, looping his arms around Chan’s back in a hug that steals some of his breath away. It steals both of their breath away actually, Chan’s weight punching some air out of Minho’s chest, and they both laugh a little as Minho coughs once, twice, to regain his breath. Chan lets his head fall on Minho’s shoulder. He understands the pressure that comes with having to look in someone’s eyes when talking to them. Chan busies himself with spelling little messages on Minho’s shoulder in English. 

_ e a r n e s t _

When Chan would write in uppercase his little brother would say his handwriting looked scary. Like a serial killers handwriting in movies.

_ u r g e n t  _

Finally, Minho seems ready to speak. His hands rub heavy soothing circles on Chan’s back and Chan thinks Minho might be breathing in time with the path of his own hand on Chan’s back. 

“My parents weren’t super religious like Hyunjin’s. I didn’t grow up with religion or anything, I honestly don’t think I can even remember going to a mass or anything like that until college when I went with a friend. My parents raised me secular, and well. They just seemed to  _ hate _ religion. Like if they saw people with cross necklaces or praying in public - any religion- they would roll their eyes. At home they would call them delusional, say they’re stupid, things like that. They didn’t see worth in things that weren’t practical.” 

_ s e c u l a r  _

“So I don’t know, I just, I won’t say I wasn’t scared to come out, because I was, but I always thought of the religious fanatics as the more homophobic people. Like, everywhere it’s always the stereotype of the puritanical christian shouting about immorality and sin, and well, my parents weren’t like that. So when I thought about coming out I wasn’t all that scared, I was more scared of the discomfort, the awkward conversation, having them see me as different but not scared of the rejection.” 

_ f e a r  _

“But I should have been.” 

Finally Chan speaks, “they didn’t take it well?” 

Minho huffs the most non-committal, pitiful laugh Chan has ever heard. 

“No, they didn’t take it well.” 

“Minho-” 

“It was a really scary time to live it at home. It was summer, the first summer home from university and the only time I left the house was to go to work at the same tiny dance place I had been answering phones for since I was in high school. I had friends, but for some reason I didn’t go and see them. I don’t know. Sometimes they would drag me out of the house but my parents were always more angry when I got back. There was the first night I told them, and the fight, and then there was the tension dragging along for weeks.” 

_ e s c a p e _

“I was mad. I didn’t know to be scared yet. I was mad, angry that they were acting like that. Weirdly enough I remember feeling embarrassed of them, that they couldn’t get it. I remember thinking, that ‘after this all blows over, they’ll be embarrassed too.’ They didn’t get over it, and it didn’t blow over. We fought. If not every day then almost every day. My dad, he just, he just kept saying ‘It’s not natural.’ He said it over and over. My mom didn’t really speak. 

_ r e c e d e _

“I came home one day, a friend had gotten me after work, had dragged me out to party somewhere his friend knew the guy hosting it and I didn’t but we still went and danced. And I told him that night, and he didn’t care. And then we all danced more and, I don’t know, it just made me angrier. That it could just be nothing, that it could just be said and not even change anything about the party. And I came home and my mom finally found her words.” 

_ c e l e b r a t i o n  _

“She had had enough, she was pissed and she was pragmatic, she always was so pragmatic, so she had decided to do something about it. She found a conversion place, I didn’t even know there were secular ones but she found one, on the other side of the country. She found one and she told me I should go. That she would pay for it, that I should be realistic. That I was irrational. That this wasn’t immoral, or wrong, or against God, but that it was ridiculous.”

_ r i d i c u l o u s  _

Minho's voice doesn’t crack, but it does waver and Chan speaks again.

“I’m so sorry.” Minho just shakes his head, before continuing, the message is clear, ‘let me get through this.’

“It was somehow worse. It’s one thing to be something someone disagrees with. To be wrong. To be an affront. Because, in order to be something someone hates they have to acknowledge you, for real, they have to see what you are and aren’t and value it enough to hate it. But to find something ridiculous? Silly? To see something as stupid and irrational, you don’t have to see it all. You don’t have to really look at something and consider  _ why _ it’s wrong if it’s just irrational, you just have to roll your eyes at it. Tell it to sort itself out.” 

Chan abandons spelling and instead, squeezes his hands in between the cushion and Minho to wrap Minho in a hug. 

“And I was mad. And she was tired of this. Of me.” 

“None of that makes you deserving of a bad ending,” Chan says quietly, earnestly, into the skin of Minho’s neck.

“It doesn’t,” Minho agrees. “But what I did next does.” 

“Ooh, what mystery, you're keeping me on the edge of my seat,” Chan teases gently and Minho laughs. It’s not a full laugh but it’s closer than before, and he hits Chan’s back. 

“Shut up asshole, I’m getting there!”

“Sorry, sorry, I’ll shut up.” If Chan had a free hand he would mime zipping his lips, but as is such he doesn’t so he just gives Minho a squeeze. 

“Thank you. As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted,” another squeeze, “it’s after this. She wants to ship me off, and I don’t want to go. I went to bed and they for some reason thought it was still up for debate so for three days they just kept trying to convince me. And then my dad said it, that if I didn’t go they would stop helping pay for my degree.” 

It’s quiet, except for the sounds of Maple’s nails clicking on the hardwood as she walks over and curls up at the other end of the too big couch. Chan hopes she’s tracking dirt everywhere, leaving her mark.

“And so I said yes. I was supposed to leave next Monday, I had five days, and I can remember such weird scraps of those days. I remember how happy my mom was that I saw reason. That I wasn’t supposed to leave except for work. I remember that my dad made my favorite meals, that he would get home from work loaded up with fresh meats and groceries from the store. The program was going to be for a month and my parents were acting like I was going off to war. They were so proud. And at night I made some plans.” 

Maple starts snoring on the other end of the couch and Chan can hear it in the moments of pause between Minho’s rushed words. 

“I was never going to go to the program. I knew all their passwords and stuff because I was the one who set up online banking for them. Two nights before I was supposed to go, while my parents were asleep I transferred money out of their retirement fund, and sent it to my account. And then I severed the tie between our accounts, disconnected them and removed them as my emergency contacts on everything. It was hard, harder than I thought it would be. There is no one stop website for that, it all had to be changed manually. Everything had to be done manually, I removed them from everything that was mine, my school, my medical records, my phone, everything, and then I changed the passwords.” 

Chan imagines Minho in the dark of a childhood bedroom, younger than he is now but the same person, sitting on a different bed in a different city desperately preparing for something else. 

“And then I wrote them a note. I remember it so well because I assumed I would do a draft and then I didn’t, I didn’t really have time. I remember it because it was so short, I just wrote, hand wrote, ‘ _ I’m leaving, I’m not going to that program or any other program you send me to. You can call the police if you want, if you hate me so much to send me to jail and I’ll actually go. But I promise you, if you let me go, if you let me take what I have I will leave you alone for the rest of my life, I will never bother you again, and it will be like you never had a son.’ _ and then I left. I had my two big bags of stuff I brought to school each semester, a backpack, and the money I stole from them.” 

“How mu-”

Minho cuts him off, “Fifteen million won. Straight from my parent’s retirement fund, they were both going to have to push back their retirement in order to afford it at all. My mom should have retired three years ago but I doubt she did.”

“Did they ever reach out to you?” Chan asks but he doesn’t feel hopeful about the answer. 

“They never called the police as far as I know. But if you're asking if I’ve spoken to them since then, no. I don’t think they could call me if they wanted to; I changed my number and all ways of contacting me. I moved to the city.”

Chan holds Minho tighter, shoves his face into Minho’s neck. 

“And I never contacted them. I kept my promise.” 

“Minho I-” 

“The last thing my mom ever said to me was that she was proud of me for making the right decision. That she was glad I was seeing reason.” 

“Well she should ha-” 

“And I’ll never get to know if they didn’t call the police because they were too ashamed, if they didn’t want to admit it, or if it was some sort of sick, too little too late acceptance.” 

“Minho there are-” 

“Because I’m a coward and a thief. I stole from them, their money and their time and their security and I didn’t even stick around to see their reaction, to tell them for the last time who I am. I didn’t give them another chance. I just left.” 

It’s the final nail in the coffin for Chan, he decides that Minho has lost the right to avoid Chan’s eyes, if he’s going to use the bravery that it allows him to say that. He sits up, still straddling Minho, and forces him to look at him. 

“You are not a coward. Minho look at me, you are not a coward. Do you hear that? You aren’t a coward, you did what you needed to do to survive-” 

“I didn’t  _ need _ to steal that much, I could have just left-”

“So what!” Chan doesn’t shout it but he practically does with all the intention behind it. “You stole, Minho, you did that, but that doesn’t mean that that’s all you are. You’re everything before and after that and everything you still are. You’re the man who taught dance for free on the weekend for the kids who couldn’t afford your classes. You’re the man who picked Hyunjin up out of the gutter and got his life back on track, you’re the man who gave Hyunjin a home, a family. You’re the man who brought Seungmin back down to earth and convinced him to stay with us, to stick with it when everything became too much. You’re the person I called when I couldn’t bear to talk to anyone else.” 

Minho blinks and his eyes are dry and his cheeks are wet and Chan realizes it’s not Minho’s tears. It’s Chan’s. 

“Minho you’re the man I’m in love with.” 

“And I have a bad ending.”

Chan shakes his head emphatically. “We don’t know that, we don’t. All we know is that we have this.” One of Minho’s shaky hands comes up to wipe at Chan’s face. “All we know is that we have this, and that I love you.” 

“I’ve never told anyone that I’ve slept with that I love them. But I’ve never told anyone all of that either. I’m not sure if I- but I just, maybe-” Chan cuts Minho off for once. He cuts him off with a kiss. 

“Then don’t say anything. Just stay with me. Stay here with me for what we have.” 

Minho nods and accidentally knocks their heads together as he leans up for the kiss in a way that leaves them both laughing, before they do actually manage to kiss without incident. 

“I’m here Chan, I’m with you.” 

Chan’s starting to believe him. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What did yall think of Chan's perspective?

**Author's Note:**

> Kirby's [Twit](https://twitter.com/faerieji)  
>    
> Nova's [Twit](https://twitter.com/sevngsvng)  
>    
> Heres my info:  
> [My NSFW twitter(minors dni)](https://twitter.com/translixie)  
>    
> [CC for yelling](https://curiouscat.me/translixie)


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